Carbonation-Induced Corrosion of Reinforced Concrete Elements according to Their Positions in the Buildings

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

the paper addresses the topic of corrosion in reinforced concrete according to the position of the element in the building envelope, based on a site survey and concrete testing.

In the opinion of the reviewer, the survey is sufficiently organized, methods are quite well described, but results are not presented with good detail.

English language and style of presentation are appropriate for a research paper, even though minor editing is required.

The reviewer believes that the paper requires major revisions in order to be accepted for publication in cmd.

A list of issues is provided below:

1) introduction is quite long is compared to other chapters of the manuscript. Some information could be removed given that they are not treated in the survey.

2) line 3 should be better explained;

3) presentation of equations should be aligned to cmd format;

4) in the manuscript, several reference sources are not founded;

5) section 1.3 - the reviewer wonders why Spanish standard code is used in the study (even though the buildings are located in Spain). Maybe Eurocode could be a better choice;

6) Figure 10 and figure 18 - the criterion used by the Authors to consider the results "acceptable" is not based on statistical fundamentals. Some statistical indicators are needed to present the results correctly (such as average value, root mean squared errors, standard deviation, ecc.);

7) conclusions are poor given that no numbers are presented. They are merely qualitative, but not useful in that format.

English language and style of presentation are appropriate for a research paper, even though minor editing is required.

Author Response

En primer lugar, los autores desean expresar su agradecimiento por los valiosos comentarios y sugerencias realizados sobre esta versión del manuscrito. Gracias a ellos, el manuscrito corregido ha sido fuertemente mejorado. El archivo adjunto contiene la respuesta a los comentarios y los cambios que se han considerado en el nuevo manuscrito.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper focusses on the influence of the position of the reinforced concrete element in a building on the phenomenon of carbonation corrosion.

The paper clearly describes the goal of the studies and the results achieved. It may interest the readers of the journal. Apart of that some suggestions should be revised:

Table 1 - Instead of comma use dot notation of calculated values.

Please provide in Conclusion part some graphic (maybe table) presentation of proposed classification of structural elements according to their position in relation to the building envelope

Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

First of all, the authors would like to express their gratitude for the valuable comments and suggestions made on this version of the manuscript. Thanks to them, the corrected manuscript has been strongly improved. The attached file contains the response to the comments and the changes have been considered in the new manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The article aims to investigate the relationship between the position of the damaged elements  (columns and reinforced concrete beams) and the building envelope, for twenty buildings in Spain. It was concluded that the reinforcement concrete of these elements underwent carbonation-induced corrosion according to their positions in the buildings.

The manuscript is well-written and organized, the subject may have a relevance in the context of reinforced concrete corrosion, although some aspects need to be clarified before publication. The current form of the manuscript requires revisions before publication in the Corrosion and Materials Degradation journal.

Some questions and observations are summarized below:

1.      Please carefully proofread spell check to eliminate grammatical and spelling errors like: line 43: there are too many opened brackets; line 60: CO2in the air; line 199: All the buildings analysed in this study had been subject – have been subjected; line 250-252 – sentence needs revision;

2.      All references should be cited in the same brackets ex: [11-15] – see line 50.

3.      The figure captions are not correctly linked and a error message appeared throughout the manuscript: line 192, line 224, line 228, etc.

4.       Equation 3 needs some revisions.

5.      Table 1 is redundant as the main data is also presented in Figure 5. Still, not all the elements are presented or labeled in the Figure 5.

6.      Figures are not of a great resolution. 

Minor editing of English is required.

Author Response

First of all, the authors would like to express their gratitude for the valuable comments and suggestions made on this version of the manuscript. Thanks to them, the revised manuscript has been greatly improved. The attached file contains the response to the comments and the changes have been considered in the new manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

the manuscript has been sufficiently improved according to the suggestions. The reviewer believes that it can be published in present form in cmd.

Minor editing of English language required.

Author Response

Thank you for your consideration and acceptance for publication. In accordance with the suggestion of the Editor, the document has been improved with the reference to recent studies on the carbonation-corrosion relationship (point 1.2).