Experimental Study on the Mechanics and Impact Resistance of Multiphase Lightweight Aggregate Concrete
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
(1) Line 144, "The splitting tensile" should be "the splitting tensile ".
(2) Table 7, Whether the number of data samples used by the fitting formula is large enough？
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Overall:
The work describes an exploratory study about the replacing the coarse aggregates of concrete and use alternative aggregates like, coal gangue or pumice. Compared to the initial manuscript, the work has been improved considerably. The introduction, methods and results are now more clearly explained. Again, this reviewer finds a bias in the background and bibliography description about the subject of study.
Minor Corrections:
Several typos can be found in the manuscript. An overall correction of minor English and typos is advised.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper has been revised according to the reviewer's comments.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
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
(1) This article requires professional language polish. There are too many Chinglish expressions in the article.
(2) The standardization of the article needs to be further improved. For example, the interpretation of the symbols in the formula does not conform to the specifications of the journal.
(3) Abstract, line 11-12, should be changed to "In order to prepare the best performance of MLAC, in this paper, coal gangue ceramsite, fly ash ceramsite,..."
(4) Abstract, line 14-15, should be changed to "By conducting various mechanical properties tests and impact resistance tests on each group of light-aggregate concrete, the compressive strength, flexural strength,..."
(5) Abstract, line 24, An explanation of these abbreviations GCG, FAC, CC and PC should be given.
(6) Key words, "Light Aggregate" should be "Light aggregate concrete"
(7) Line 51, why two authors are mentioned when citing references, while only one author is mentioned elsewhere.
(8) Line 54-55, "from 62.9 and 5.1 MPa to 42.3 and 3.7 MPa" should be "from 62.9MPa and 5.1 MPa to 42.3 MPa and 3.7 MPa"
(9) Line 55, "robust" should be changed to "strong"
(10) Figure 2~Figure 4，the color for BC and CGC，PC and FAC are not easy to distinguish.
(11) In Table 5, "regression coefficients" should be "correlation coefficient"
(12) Line 343, "table 5" should be "Table 5"
(13) Equation 1~10, the meaning of many symbols is repeated to explain.
(14) Figure 7, the text on the abscissa and ordinate is not clear.
(15) Table 7, the authors should state whether the sample size used in the study was sufficient to obtain these fitting formulas.
Reviewer 2 Report
Experimental study on mechanics and impact resistance of 3 multiphase lightweight aggregate concrete
Overall:
The work describes an exploratory study about the replacing the coarse aggregates of concrete and use alternative aggregates like, coal gangue or pumice. The work should be improved for publication. First of all, the utilization of aggregates in order to make concrete more sustainable should be revised. Actually, sustainability should be defined and parameters or metrics should be defined to prove the results. The material and methods section does not provide enough information about the experimental studies or the design of experiments. The results are not properly explained. As no occidental researcher are cited in the work, this reviewer find a bias in the background and bibliography description about the subject of study.
Major Corrections:
Pag. 3, line 17: How the usage of coral as construction material reduces damage to natural resources?
Table 2: Improve the table caption and add units to the presented data
Introduction
- Explain why coal gangue? How would you evaluate is the concrete is more sustainable?
Materials and methods:
- The PSD of the fine and coarse aggregates is not informed
- The methods and design of experiments are not properly described, please elaborate
- Table 2 should be more clear, please change the nomenclature and explain all the variables
- Explain when the test are carried out, 10 days, 30days?
- Why choosing impact resistance for light concrete?
Results
- What is the red line in Figure 2?
- Please reorganize the derivation of the equations in the method section
- Why using the Weibull distribution and no other statistics distributions like the gamma, or lognormal for example?
- Figure 7 shows very kinky plots, how to be sure that the fitting is not overfitted?
Minor Corrections:
Revise line 11-15, does not make sense.
Several typo errors along the manuscript should be corrected
Reviewer 3 Report
Reviewer comments #:
The main topic of the paper “Experimental study on mechanics and impact resistance of multiphase lightweight aggregate concrete” is in line with research themes published within Journal of sustainability (Section of Sustainable Engineering and Science). Generally, the topic and the research area of the manuscript is worthy of investigation. The paper requires some modification to be published. Useful information was provided but still requires further analysis. I have the following comments that the authors should implement in the revised manuscript before publication, please see the major comments below:
1. In the abstract section, some information can be moved to the aim of the study or to the experimental section such as “The compressive strength, flexural strength, splitting tensile strength and impact energy dissipation of MLAC were used as performance indexes to evaluate the comprehensive performance of each group of MLAC. The impact resistance of MLAC is also analyzed in depth by combining the two-parameter Weibull distribution model, and the corresponding evolution equation of impact loss resistance of MLAC is established”.
2. The authors should be including specific results (number or percentage %) about the main points from this study in the abstract.
3. In the introduction section, the information of multiphase lightweight aggregate concrete should be supported by more recent research about this study should be included (e.g. 2019 and 2022). The introduction section should be expanded by included good published papers.
4. Introduction: The connection between the aim of the work and the literature gaps should be better described, thus giving more strength to the reason behind this work.
5. Experimental design and results, please explain why? “with the increase of coal gangue ceramsite content, the compressive strength of CGC increases first and then decreases”.
6. Please give better explanation for Figure 2 Figure 3 and Figure 4, most of the results from this Figure need explanations.
7. Please give more reasons for the results and supported by good published papers.
8. The authors mentioned that the “Due to the low strength and higher water absorption of pumice, the mechanical properties of PC have been reduced” Please add percentage for the PC reduction.
9. The section of Experimental design and results is good but still this section need to include more information related to the results from the previous studies.
10. In line 374, the authors should be defining the name of Y axis and X axis in the text as well as please give value or percentage of the greater than X axis.
11. In conclusion section, please write two sentence as introduction to the conclusions and include the main conclusions you obtained from this study because the points is too long and not good for reader, I suggest to divided each point to two conclusion and increase the number of conclusions.
12. I recommend the authors to give an outlook on future research work in the conclusion section.
13. References: The authors should include the latest published papers (e.g. 2020 and 2022) because the most of the references are less than 2019.
Thank you
