Coupled Thermomechanical Responses of Zirconium Alloy System Claddings under Neutron Irradiation

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Section 2.2 presented the zirconium alloy properties. The properties are only for one type of materials, but you have studied 4 different materials, including pure Zr, Zr-4 alloy, Zr-2.5Nb-0.5Cu alloy and N36 alloy. 

Please include information of the numerical models and simulation, including element types, element numbers, time steps, simulation time, simulation procedures, etc.

The axial locations of the radial plots of Figs. 2-4. The units in these figures.

B in Equs (3) and (4) are not explained.

Equation (10) need to be corrected.

Typo “Due to the axisymmetry of cladding cube.” on page 3.

“and the heat is heated to 1200 oC by radial irradiation” on page 4 needs to be rewritten for clarity. Where is the 1200 oc?

“The distribution of temperature is gradient increase at the end of cladding…” on page 4 needs to be rewritten for clarity. Temperature or temperature gradient?

Typo in “temperature is no sensitive to…” on page 4.

Typo in “… distribution of stress is dependence on ally element” on page 5.

Grammar mistake in “… of N36 alloy is that decreases from…” on page 5.

Several typos or grammar mistakes on page 6.

Grammar mistake “is increase with” on page 7

References do not match those in the citation. References are not numbered.

Author Response

We would like to thank you greatly for this opportunity to improve the quality of our manuscript. Please see the attachment!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Please see the attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We would like to thank you greatly for this opportunity to improve the quality of our manuscript. Please see the attachment!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

In this paper, the authors studied the coupled thermo-mechanical responses of Zr alloy system claddings under neutron irradiation by building irradiation growth models of the pure Zr and Zr alloy multi-systems. The authors have carried out a systematic investigation and did a good job of explaining their work. These findings are likely to be of interest to the community in understanding the behavior of materials under extreme environments involving high temperatures, high pressure, and irradiation. Overall, it is a nice work by identifying and addressing a problem that has not been studied yet. However, the reviewer feels that the English need to be reworked, there are some grammatical mistakes like spelling, punctuations, and proper use of verbs throughout the manuscript. The reviewer recommends the authors to check through the manuscript thoroughly for these errors, which makes the readers easy to follow. Therefore, the reviewer recommends that the paper be accepted after minor revisions.

Comments for author File: Comments.docx

Author Response

We would like to thank you greatly for this opportunity to improve the quality of our manuscript. Please see the attachment!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

The authors should think about including SRIM/TRIM based penetration profile for their alloy in order to check robustness of them:

Deflection behavior of focused-ion-beam deposited carbon nanocantilever and overhung structures, Advanced Materials Letters 8 (4), 324-330

The authors should include some related discussion about their comparison with NiTi alloy, and other similar alloys including HEAs, in their potential application; at present Zr based high entropy alloys are becoming potential candidate for related research:

Applied Surface Science 476, 242-258

The authors must include most recent research and associated discussion.

Author Response

We would like to thank you greatly for this opportunity to improve the quality of our manuscript. Please see the attachment!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 5 Report

Review of the manuscript "The coupled thermo-mechanical responses of Zr alloy system claddings under neutron irradiation".

Numbering is not present in the section References.

Line numbers are not present in the whole manuscript.

Please add and resubmit for review!

Author Response

We would like to thank you greatly for this opportunity to improve the quality of our manuscript. Please see the attachment!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

In regards to my previous comment#3 "The simulation resulted presented in this work has no correlation with the practical application. For instance, how one can improve the existing design by utilizing the simulation results presented in this work. It seems that this manuscript has no real discussion, instead feels like a data dump on readers."

The effort made by authors on discussing the data is not acceptable in the present form. Anyone can say that the data supports practical working condition. Please refer to the other articles on how to "scientifically discuss" data. 

Author Response

Point 1 In regards to my previous comment#3 "The simulation resulted presented in this work has no correlation with the practical application. For instance, how one can improve the existing design by utilizing the simulation results presented in this work. It seems that this manuscript has no real discussion, instead feels like a data dump on readers."

Response 1: The authors are grateful for this comment. The data of temperature and stress is very difficult to be measured in practical working condition with neutron irradiation. Therefore, the FEM modeling of cladding materials are usually employed for safety analysis. Thus, the thermo-mechanical behavior of different Zr-based alloys was studied in the current work. The effect of neutron irradiation on the temperature and stress evolution of cladding is presented. Based on the simulation results, the engineers working in nuclear industry can evaluate the Zr-based cladding material and assess the safety during service. The discussion part has been rewritten. 

Point 2 The effort made by authors on discussing the data is not acceptable in the present form. Anyone can say that the data supports practical working condition. Please refer to the other articles on how to "scientifically discuss" data.

Response 2: The authors are grateful for this comment. More corresponding articles are referred as shown in references [11], [27]-[30]. Due to security and limitation of the measured data in practical working condition, the simulation results are compared with the results from published work for validation. In particular, it is found that similar tendency are observed for the stress distribution and gap distance compared with the ones in references [28] and [29]. The discussion part has been rewritten with yellow highlight.

Reviewer 4 Report

manuscript is ok now

Author Response

The authors are grateful for this comment.

Reviewer 5 Report

Second review of the manuscript "The coupled thermo-mechanical responses of Zr alloy system claddings under neutron irradiation".

In the manuscript the authors describe the results of a thermo-mechanical modeling but without evidence of any kind of validation. In my opinion this is the main lack of this manuscript. I warmly recommend to be added.

The manuscript is clear enough, english acceptable. It can be accepted after minor revision.

Author Response

Point 1 Second review of the manuscript "The coupled thermo-mechanical responses of Zr alloy system claddings under neutron irradiation".

Response 1: The authors are grateful for this comment.

Point 2 In the manuscript the authors describe the results of a thermo-mechanical modeling but without evidence of any kind of validation. In my opinion this is the main lack of this manuscript. I warmly recommend to be added.

Response 2: The authors are grateful for this comment. More corresponding articles are referred as shown in references [11], [27]-[30]. Due to security and limitation of the measured data in practical working condition, the simulation results are compared with the ones from published works for validation. It is found that similar tendency are observed for stress distribution and gap distance compared with the ones in references [28] and [29]. The discussion part has been rewritten with validation.

Point 3 The manuscript is clear enough, english acceptable. It can be accepted after minor
revision.

Response 3: The authors are grateful for this comment. The manuscript has been
carefully revised accordingly.