Experimental Study on the Impact Dynamics of Cylindrical Baffles with a Rigid Barrier against Debris Flows

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Overview and general recommendation:

The authors are trying to implement an interesting experiment on the impact dynamics of cylindrical baffles with a rigid barrier against debris flows.

A first comment reading carefully the paper is that the paper could be of interest to the readership of the Special Issue "Landslides Analysis and Management: From Data Acquisition to Modelling and Monitoring". In addition, the experiments are described with sufficient detail so as to allow another researcher to reproduce the results. However, there are some points that are missing or are not written appropriately in the whole paper.

Therefore, I recommend major revision. I explain my points in more detail below. Thus, to make this paper publishable, the authors need to respond to the following remarks.

 Major comment

1.    Reading the well-explained laboratory procedure, I would expect authors to study and as a result, examine furthermore the geotechnical properties of the ground which the experiment results are going to be used in the defined places the manuscript describes. It is well understood that in a laboratory-specific background, the above remark cannot be exactly implemented, but the scope of this laboratory procedure is the outcomes of this experiment to be implemented in the natural ground where its geomechanical properties might change or differ the results that authors tried to apply in the laboratory.

2.    In my opinion, the Discussion Section should be further commented on and analyzed.

 Minor comments

1. Lines 66, 67. Please correlate the two photos with the described (a) and (b) caption notes respectively.

2. Lines 197-224. Please check the format of this part of the manuscript with the rest of it.

 

3. Lines 324-391. Please check the References format according to the journal’s guidelines.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Main remarks are given as below：

 (1)  Why the inclination of the flume was only set to 15 degree in this study, the others with different flume slope according to debris flow gully should be further discussed.

(2)  How to determine the diameter of boulders in different experimental cases in this flume test, as we known, the characteristics of boulders often changes with debris flow dynamic conditions.

(3)  This study only analyzed experimental results, the related numerical simulation should be described, two journal publications could be cited:

Raymond Pak Hei Law, Clarence Edward Choi, and Charles Wang Wai Ng，Discrete-element investigation of influence of granular debris flow baffles on rigid barrier impact，Can. Geotech. J. 53: 179–185 (2016) dx.doi.org/10.1139/cgj-2014-0394

Ming Lei，Po Yang，Yi-kui Wang，Xie-kang Wang，Numerical analyses of the influence of baffles on the dynamics of debris flow in a gully，Arabian Journal of Geosciences (2020) 13: 1052，https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-020-06016-z

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Reading carefully the revised manuscript, I have no further comments, as I am totally satisfied with the authors' answers and the modifications they made.