Design and Optimization of Multipoint Sampler for Seafloor Sediment Carried by a Deep-Sea Landing Vehicle

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

Please to kindly read the attached file, thank you.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

·       The title of the article corresponds to the content of the article.

·       The structure of the abstract is satisfactory. It contains all the necessary elements, the introduction part, the problem of the research, the goal, the methodology and the results.

·       In the introduction and the rest of the paper, I have noticed that the authors cite the literature very strangely. For example like this ”^[2] ”, I believe that the correct way to refer to literature throughout the text needs to be like this [2].

·       line 31 - 33 cite more literature that states why sediment samples are important.

·       line 36-38 cite literature for this claim

·       can you give an overview of the development of the commercially available seafloor sediment sampler not only the research carried out so that I know that your proposed design is better than the existing commercially available solutions?

·       can you write a few sentences about the research space where you tested your prototype

·   my biggest complaint is that manuscript is written more in the form of a technical report and not in the form of a scientific paper. Also, not enough emphasis is placed on the applicability of the system that has been designed...

 

·       Where the results you obtained can be implemented and how much better are they compared to existing solutions, in other words----I'm missing a discussion chapter and I suggest you expand it….

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

this study proposes a low-energy consumption multipoint sampler for seafloor sediment.

Contributions compared to the-state-of-the-art on  sediment sampler are not clear to me.

 

Fig 3 shows the structure of the sampler. Each component in the sampler needs to be explained in detail. Is there any novelty in the structure in fig 3?

 

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

I am satisfied with revision.

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.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors designed a seafloor sediment sampler for a Deep Sea Landing Vehicle. The design, mathematical formulation of the forces affecting, and optimization of selected design parameters are presented.

The paper is written in good english and the methods are presented in detail. However, the descriptions are too long and complicated. The paper can be shortened significantly.  

1.  Please describe clearly what is time/location-series sampling and what are the requirements for each. How does your design address each?

2. The system has 8 sampling structures and can collect 8 samples per dive. Time-series or location-series sampling is left to the user and does not have any impact on the design.

3. System description is inadequate

a. Is DSLV a bottom crawler? What are the typical operation constraints, such as depth rating, operation time, etc.

b. Mention dimensions and other specifications of DSLV

c. Mention outer Dimensions of the proposed sampler

d. Mention electrical and mechanical specifications of the proposed sampler

4. Why is it necessary to add a syntactic shell to the sampling structure? Isn't a heavier bit more suitable for drilling?

5. What is the necessity for acceleration and deceleration during sampling? It takes just 7 seconds for the sampler to reach the sediment at constant speed.

6. Is the definition of sampling rate consistent with literature?

7. Conclusions must be rewritten and shortened. Only focus on what is achieved during this work.

Other minor comments are :

1. Drainage holes are not shown in Fig. 3

2. Line 163 - 'no longer pops up' means it used to in the past?

3. Fig.1 caption should be formatted similar to other figures

4. Line 93 - It is not clear what is the relationship between battery capacity and operating costs

5. Fig.2 subfigures are not marked

6. Parameters P and V are used before defining them

7. L>>H as per Fig.5. However, both are 10mm as per Table 1

8. Half of page 12 is empty

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript “Design and optimization of multipoint sampler for seafloor sediment carried by a deep-sea landing vehicle” by Gao et al., submitted for publication to the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, presents results of an engineering study on an autonomous sampler to be operated in the deep sea with a landing crawler (DSLV) as device carrier. The sampler consists of a drive mechanism for a push corer and a revolver containing eight of these push corers. The push core samples shall be either collected for a time series over a period of six months or for a mapping exercise over a distance of approximately 10 km. The results presented in this study focus on a finite element model calculation combined with a smoothed particle hydrodynamics approach (FEM-SPH method) on the force required for the drive mechanism in dependence of the push corer design variables cone angle, sampling tube inner diameter, and sampling tube inner hole length. The goal is to find the optimal design parameters for getting a large sample volume with minimal power requirements.

The study is in it’s present form not at all suitable for publication within an international scientific journal. For the international reader it is impossible to check the cited references since only national publications are cited, most of them written in Chinese language. DOIs that could help the reader to find the references are missing. The English language used by the authors is hardly understandable mainly because the technical vocabulary does not correspond to the international standard. For example, the authors use the term “pressure” when obviously writing about force! This is only the most drastic example of unsuitable usage of technical and scientific vocabulary that makes it nearly impossible to read and understand the manuscript. If the authors want to write in English in order to publish in an international journal they also have to read English literature. In that case they also could gain a better understanding of the vocabulary and how it is used.

Because of the difficulties to read and to understand the manuscript it does not make sense to comment on the approach, structure of the study and manuscript and on questions to be addressed. However, I had the impression that the authors are skilled mechanical engineers with a substantial lack of experience in sea floor sampling and geomechanics.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx