Key Factors of the Initiation and Development of Polygonal Wear in the Wheels of a High-Speed Train
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper presents a lot of data on wheels of high speed trains, and shows that all polygonalisation corresponds to about the same frequency associated with a particular wheelset resonance. This is a helpful insight, as the literature on the topic is confusing. It is a pity that the analytical model did not explain why lower frequency wheelset resonances do not also lead to polygonalisation, although I appreciate that the authors have ideas on how to improve their model to account for this.
I find Figure 3 more confusing than helpful, as it starts the reader wondering about the meaning of A-order, B-order and C-order without giving any idea what frequency range these correspond to, when the large amount of data that follows all shows just one peak in waviness, not three.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The present paper deals with a statistical analysis of a large dataset concerning polygonal wear in the wheels of high-speed train. A theoretical model is also proposed to study polygonal wear, and especially how it is influenced by several parameters (e.g. train orientation speed , wheel diameter) and finally derive some related conclusions.
The paper is rather well written (try avoid birds instead of symbols next time though…) and organized, and can be recommended for publication after the following modifications are made:
-Please rewrite the introduction part concerning references to high-order polygonal wear (from L71 to L96). A list of sequential references is given, without a clear progression, thus it should be reordered so that it follows a clear reasoning leading to the motivation and the novelty of the paper
-Figure 1: Please provide a scale bar in the figure.
-All figures: Could the author provide colored version of the figures rather than grey level images?
-Section 2: Please provide details about the wheel and the testing set-up (constitutive materials, supplier,..)
-L147: This is not true. Please rewrite this sentence saying that the proportion of polygonal wheels exhibits a non monotonic variation as a function of the wheel diameter, including three local maxima around 830-840mm, 870-880mm, 910-920mm, corresponding to three periods of high-rate developpement …
-Figure 4: Please provide the wheel diameter of each car on the figure, and please adopt the same text font for the abscissae and ordinate axis.
-L182-183 ‘The frequency is very important to 183 explain the mechanism of initiation and development of high-order polygonal wear’. Please be more specific
-Please add axis systems in Fig. 7
-L241: Why there is a bird instead of a symbol? Please correct it
-L243: Please provide information about the mesh employed in the FE model. How the geometry is obtained? What is the number of nodes, of elements? What is a typical time calculation Please also provide proofs of result independency to mesh size to ensure that a sufficiently fine mesh has been used.
-Figure 8: Please add more visible axis system.
-I cannot read many symbols from line 284 to 287, again birds appear instead.
-L53: characterise => characterize
-L103: analyses => analyzes
-L109: Remove “Finally, the conclusions are provided in Section 6.”
-L145: “the higher is” remove “is”
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Typographical Comments
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Line 6: provide details of corresponding author.
Lines 9-10: delete text.
Line 155: Figure 4, missing 18th order annotation.
Line 180: Change the term "Formula (1)" to "Equation (1)"
Line 241: Correct mathematical symbol "where ...".
Line 256: Start heading in the next page with content.
Lines 284-287, 290, 293, 298, 300: Correct mathematical symbols.
Technical Comments
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Line 112: It is relevant to include the technical name of the test instrument.
Lines 119-128: Too abstract. Provide actual numbers for the rail roughness criteria.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
ready to be published
