Characteristics of Acoustic Emission Caused by Intermittent Fatigue of Rock Salt

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors study the effect of the time period of intermittent no stress stage on fatigue response of sea salt. The manuscript is well-written and there are several interesting observations including how up to around 900 s delay time, various characteristics of fatigue response get worse. The use of AE count and relation to damage are also interesting.

The reviewer recommends the acceptance of the manuscript after addressing the following minor comments:

1.      The last sentence of the abstract is ambiguous and even incomplete (A threshold in the duration of the time interval 25 exists (around 900 s)). It implies that we reach a plateau (what state?) and this is not the case from their results (fatigue performance improves beyond 900 s delay).

2.      Line 45, suggestion: examine can be a better choice than exam.

3.      The reviewer could not find the time interval of each cycle in the text and in figure 4. Please provide this value if not already mentioned.

4.      Just as a hypothetical scenario, what do the authors expect to happen if instead of 2, multiple loading cycles are included in figure 4.b? It is favorable if the authors comment on how the physics of the problem may be affected with more loading cycles for example in the conclusions (no new experiments are needed).

5.      Figure 6 and lines 113 to 114: The best fit assumes that there is a residual strain rate, whereas in figure 6 it appears right before eventual failure there is a higher residual strain rate. This can be mentioned in the text.

6.      Figure 11: One should go to the caption to interpret the meaning of x and y axes. Please label the axes of the figures.

7.      Equation (10): Does this equation imply that D = 1 correspond to a fixed residual strain? If so, what is that strain value? The same question comes in line 114 and following lines, in that when fatigue life is reached in the experiment, is it associated with certain phenomena (for example again residual strain reaching a threshold)? A brief discussion is sufficient.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

• The actual apparatus used in the experiment as well as the samples that were examined have to be illustrated in accordance with Fig.1.
• What are the effects of the stress ratio on the fatigue life?
• There should be some discussion on the effects of the temperature.
• If the maximum temperature that was used was 100 degrees Celsius, would this indicate that several different temperature ranges had been used? Why did you decide to go with this temperature?
• The phrase "the highest confining pressure applied was 30 MPa" appears in lines 58 and 59, but the phrase "the upper stress was 35.04 MPa" appears on line 80. Clarifications are required.
• The method for determining the average fatigue life in Table 1 needs to be clarified further.
• After the experiment, actual tested samples should be shown in figures.
• It is necessary to provide specific explanations for the reverse softening that the Bauschinger effect causes.
• Conclusions section does not present any relevant conclusion; it is like a second abstract.
• For the purposes of validation, the results need further comparisons.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have addressed all the comments  and revised the manuscript accordingly.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.