Moisture Dry-Out Capability of Steel-Faced Mineral Wool Insulated Sandwich Panels
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
the introduction is a very "quick one". Furthermore, the cited references are always the same... please introduce some new ones, otherwise is seems that "used" a reference too much. Please better introduce the topic. for example: some different fillers may be used in this layered structures? Why further studies on rock wool are necessary since this material is harmful? This is "Sustainability" and rock wool is not a sustainable material... so please better explain why this is worthy of investigation. For example, try to compare to other sustainable materials...
Moisture moisture dry-out is a process driven also by temperature. Please include a brief discussion on it with some new references (hint: Kyaw Oo D’Amore et. al Towards the Use of Novel Materials in Shipbuilding: Assessing Thermal Performances of Fire-Doors by Self-Consistent Numerical Modelling. Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 5736, https://doi.org/10.3390/app10175736)
Figure 5. Time is in seconds? minutes? hours? days? etc...
Overall:
It seems to me that this is more a technical report for a private company than a scientific research. It is clear and expected that it is very difficult to dry-out a sandwich panel made of external steel sheet. Clearly, most of the surface is constituted of a non permeable material...... If one knows this technology, he/she knows that sealing are requested by customers and production procedures, even because of moisture absorption issues.
To this aim, since it is a practical evidence that rock wool because of PU glue breaks off, because of water, these thin structures will have problems. Nevertheless they are the most used in civil temporary constructions and in naval ones where water is everywhere...
Thus, I right now may not understand where is the innovative effort of this paper. Sealing tape? is commercial... Dry-out speed? I do not see any maps regarding how it may propagate within the rockwool panels... this could be somehow interesting...
Present conclusions are well known to market stakeholders.
Please, improve the scientific part of this paper.
Thank you for understanding
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for your effort. We appreciate it and have made major changes to the paper. Please see the attachment with detailed point-by-point answers to Your review.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The Authors presented the topic of the moisture dry-out capacity and the hygrothermal regime of a steel faced sandwich panel with mineral wool insulation. The topic is definitely worth consideration and the tests are adequate. The article has two main weaknesses. The first is the very low significance of conclusions. The Authors claim that "It is recommended that the sandwich
panels be supplied on site in a sealed condition so that they would not adsorb moisture before installation and that during the construction time weather protection be used to avoid water ingress into the panels." This is quite obvious and most of the experienced construction managers would say the same without any costly research. It would be valuable to indicate the optimal protection methods and check how they contribute to better preformance of the steel faced sandwich panel with mineral wool insulation. From the Figure 11. Possible vapour leakage path during the first days of the experiment (a) and the fix (b) one can understand that the suggested method is to just use the siver tape and leave the pannels "fixed" like this. The illustartive materials should be more carefully developed and better described. This represents the second weakness of the article. The figures are poorly presented and in some cases it is very hard or even impossible to read them. This regards in particular:
Fig. 4 - the colours of RH values are almost identical so it is very hard to follow how these values change
Fig. 6 - the content of the table is blured and difficult to read
Fig. 7 - too small and difficult to read
Fig. 9, b) - the temperature change are not so linear, clear description is necessary
Fig. 11 - needs clear description, especially regarding part b)
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for your effort. We appreciate it and have made major changes to the paper. Please see the attachment with detailed point-by-point answers to Your review.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Manuscript ID: sustainability-961848
The authors present study about moisture dry-out capability of steel faced mineral wool insulated sandwich panels. The research topic is interesting and meaningful. The risk of moisture damage in insulation material is serious problem worldwide. In this work, a series of laboratory tests and heat, air and moisture transport simulations were carried out. For the first time in literature, moisture dry-out capability of steel faced mineral wool insulated sandwich panels is presented. However, some minnor errors and deficiencies were also discovered.
-Backgrounds need to be strengthened. Following references were suggested to be added in the Introduction:
Energy and Buildings 53 (2012): 39-46
Materials 13.10 (2020): 2392
-Submitted figures shows some weaknesses regarding contrast, text size that is too small. Please improved figures: 1, 3, 6, 7, 10.
-Using vapour retarding tapes on the outer joints will lead to persisting high humidity conditions inside the panel. However, in steel faced insulated sandwich panels also corrosion is inevitable. Did you consider how to protect steel material in a long-term?
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for your effort. We appreciate it and have made changes to the paper. Please see the attachment with detailed point-by-point answers to Your review.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper is much more improved. Thank you
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have improved the paper and in my opinion it can be published in the present form.
