When Does a Light Sphere Break Ice Plate Most by Using Its Net Buoyance?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

My comments have been well addressed. The only thing might be improved is the sentences line 264-267. In the tests, the sphere size is actually comparable to the ice domain. I believe the boundary still plays a role here. Nevertheless, it still shows some merits to be presented. I have no more comments. If possible, it will be beneficial to have a language editing for this paper before it finally gets published.

Author Response

Reviewer #1

Comment 1:

My comments have been well addressed. The only thing might be improved is the sentences line 264-267. In the tests, the sphere size is actually comparable to the ice domain. I believe the boundary still plays a role here. Nevertheless, it still shows some merits to be presented. I have no more comments. If possible, it will be beneficial to have a language editing for this paper before it finally gets published.

Response 1:

Many thanks for your support. According to your further comment, we have added some sentences to describe the boundary condition of the ice plate in section 3.2, as below:

‘

The fixing system was adopted to restrict the motion of the ice plate on the free surface. We tried to simulate the collision of a sphere with a very large ice sheet, rather than a free-floating ice. However, due to the limitation of ice-making technology and experimental equipment, the size of the ice plate cannot be very large. Considering the displacement and ration angle of the ice sheet tend to be zero at a very large distance, we designed a fixing system to rigid fix the edge of the ice plate. The main body of the fixing system was aA supporter made of polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA). ……’

We agree that the boundary condition plays roles on the responses of the ice plate, which is beyond the scope of this paper and will be studied further in the future. We also added a sentence in the last paragraph as below:

‘…Furthermore, the effect of boundary condition of the ice plate will be studied, including free floating boundary condition, etc.’

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

It is an interesting paper with sound theoretical approach and proper validation by experiments

Author Response

Reviewer #2

Comment 1:

It is an interesting paper with sound theoretical approach and proper validation by experiments

Response 1:

Thank you very much for your support. 

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

The paper can be published as it was submitted.

Author Response

Reviewer #3

Comment 1:

The paper can be published as it was submitted.

Response 1:

Thank you very much for your support.

Reviewer 4 Report (New Reviewer)

a) The test temperature -5 (C degrees) mean the complex brittle-plastic destruction of ice. For brittle  behavior the temperature below -8(C degrees)  is recommended.

b)    The test is small-scale which simplify the numerical modelling of interaction. Advice to authors to vary the ice thickness and velocity of ball (UV) for new findings.

Author Response

Reviewer #4

Comment 1:

1. a) The test temperature -5 (C degrees) mean the complex brittle-plastic destruction of ice. For brittle behavior the temperature below -8(C degrees) is recommended.

Response 1:

Thank you very much for your comments. We agree that behaviors of ice under -5°C are complex and presenting brittle-plastic transition. However, it is very hard for us to do experiment of ice plate with lower temperature such as -8°C as recommended. Just as we mentioned in the manuscript, the ice plate with lower temperature would break after laid in water near 0°C directly, under excessive temperature difference. As the temperature of water cannot be reduced further, we had no choice but enhance the temperature of ice plate. After many attempts, we found when the temperature of the ice plate was enhanced to -5℃, the ice plate will not break after laid in water [15,53]. Therefore, we chose the temperature of the ice plate as -5℃ also in this paper.

 

[15] Yuan, G. Y., Ni, B. Y., Wu, Q. G., Xue, Y. Z., & Han, D. F. (2022). Ice breaking by a high-speed water jet impact. Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 934.

[53] Ni, B. Y., Pan, Y. T., Yuan, G. Y., & Xue, Y. Z. (2021). An experimental study on the interaction between a bubble and an ice floe with a hole. Cold Regions Science and Technology, 187, 103281.

 

Comment 2:

1. b) The test is small-scale which simplify the numerical modelling of interaction. Advice to authors to vary the ice thickness and velocity of ball (UV) for new findings.

Response 2:

Thank you very much for your suggestions. Actually, we adopted the control variable method in the experiment to study the influence of parameters, that is, the parameter of concern was changed in the experiment while other parameters were constant. For example, when we discussed the effect of ice thickness on ice plate damage, the rest of the parameters were fixed, which were demonstrated as Section 4.3 The effect of dimensionless ice thickness  on ice plate damage. Therefore, we did not change the thickness of the ice plate and the velocity of the sphere at the same time.

On the other hand,  the sphere studied in this paper rose freely in the water under the action of net buoyant force without initial velocity, so the velocity of the sphere is not set artificially but controlled by the density of the sphere. Therefore, we discussed the influence of dimensionless density in Section 4.4, instead of the velocity of ball.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

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

This work could be reconsidered after addressing carefully the following comments:

1.The title of the manuscript should be more sharp.

2.The abbreviations should not be used in the title, abstract, and keywords.

3.The motivation and contribution of this works must be clarified in the introduction section.

4.Some quantities results should be presented in abstract and conclusion.

5.The Nomenclature should be completed.

6.The ideas/criteria of choosing the size/arrangement of considered system should be given?

7.More explanation is required in results and discussion section.

8.For more contribution, the authors should compare their results with the related results in other published works.

9.There are many grammatical errors and typoerros throughout the whole manuscript? The paper should be rechecked.

10.The novelty of the work must be clearly addressed and discussed, compare your research with existing research findings and highlight novelty, (compare your work with existing research findings and highlight novelty).

11.Conclusion: Future scope of the work should be provided.

12.The literature review section is very weak. As they are many recent published papers on the same topic need to be included.

13. All the equations should be numbered in standard format.

14. Some quantitative results should be added in the Abstract section.

15. The reference should be added for all equations.

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper presents an experimental study to the icebreaking by a free-rising buoyant sphere in small scale. The paper is well organized and prepared. However, I feel that this paper has limited novel contribution and many discussions are intuitive. The conclusion item 3 seems to be the only relevant research output here, which is based on a simplified theoretic approach. Another major concerning is about the presentation of the crack/failure of the ice sheet. I don’t understand why the artificial “red lines” are added to the original picture, which weaken the credit of the experiment tests. Is it possible to present the pictures (showing the cracks) without adding the illustrative lines? For example, the Figure 9 is a good try.

See my detailed comments below:

1. Please include the author credit statement for each author involved.
2. Generally, the writing must be improved. There are many mistakes, such as ‘one hundred year’ (line 32), sentence on line 37-38, line 273 “perhaps?” etc.
3. As to the experimental methods, it is seen that the ice sheet is clamped at 4 locations as shown in Fig. 5 (b). Could you explain will this impose unrealistic boundary effects to the ice sheet? Have you seen any cracks starting from the clamped areas?
4. Line 259-268. The discussion of Eq. (9) is confusing. If you think the Eq. (9) is not relevant, why you need to discuss it?
5. The discussion of eq. (10) and (11) is quite intuitive, I don’t see why you need to include the equations.
6. And at last, I’m also wondering any practical application to such study? The authors may need to explain why such study is needed.