Study of the Effect of Friction Time and Preheating on the Joint Mechanical Properties of Friction Welded SS 316-Pure Zn
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
a) In the introduction, the author only mentioned the application potential of zinc and the performance advantages of zinc alloys in general. However, the reason why the friction welding between pure zinc and stainless steel, as well as the research status and existing problems of zinc and stainless steel welding, were not involved. Therefore, the research value and research achievements of this paper cannot be confirmed.
b)The author mentioned that friction welded joints are generally divided into five organizational regions, namely known as the undeformed zone (UZ), this zone is unaffected by heat (base metal) The second zone is known as the partially deformed zone (PDZ) or the Heat Affected Zone (HAZ) (HAZ). This zone is the second diffusion region of the material [4, 30, 40]. The third zone is called the plasticized zone (PZ)。 However, the author has not clearly pointed out that there are several zones in the friction welded joint between pure zinc and stainless steel in this study. If it is different from the literature, there should also be different reasons.
c)In the aspect of microhardness test, the compressive load adopted by the author is 1000g, which is too large for the welded joint of pure zinc and stainless steel. In addition, the test interval of 0.5mm is too large, which is not conducive to identifying different areas of welded joints.
d)In the conclusion of the paper, the oxide layer will form on the metal surface as friction time increases, blocking the diffusion process; the diffusion process is essential because it permits the production of an intermetallic phase for the joint's strength; This investigation can also lead to additional research on multilayer friction welding techniques。 These conclusions lack the support of experimental results.
Author Response
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Reviewer 2 Report
This is a good effort from authors on "Study of the Effect of Friction Time on the Joint Mechanical Properties of Friction Welded SS 316-pure Zn". However, there are few suggestions from my side:
1. Authors must work on highlighting the novelty of their work if that is there in the light of previous literature.
2. Friction welding has lot of factors to be considered which play vital role in joining similar as well as dissimilar materials. What was the reason of investigating the FRW of steel with Zn by considering only the welding time?
3. Authors must shown the drawings of samples for both tenile and bending tests.
4. Authors must show the locations where the micro-hardnesses were measured.
5. Please compare the strengths and hardness with their previous values in the literature if SS were welded with Zn.
6. The last line of the second paragraph cites a reference improperly. This is 44th.
7. In the same paragraph, it is mentioned that the formation of intermetallic compounds are necessary for good bonding. However, there are evidences that the presence of these compound may form a brittle joint with increased value of hardness which is actually not desired.
8. This paper seems shorter in its length and breadth.
Author Response
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Reviewer 3 Report
please see the attachment.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
Thanks the author for addressing most comments.
