Influence of Soluble Salt NaCl on Cracking Characteristics and Mechanism of Loess

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Interesting article. I congratulate the authors of the research in the development of cracking with the use of computer programs. It is interesting to see how the evolution of loess specks occurs with cyclic wetting and drying?

Author Response

Response: Thank you very much for the suggestions.

A number of research results have been achieved in the literature on the factors affecting soil crack network patterns such as temperature, humility, soil thickness, bottom surface friction, drying-wetting cycle (Wei et al., 2020; Tang et al., 2021). Among the above factors, the drying-wetting cycle is one of the most common ones in nature, particularly requiring more relevant research. Tang et al. (2008; 2010; 2011) studied the influence of drying-wetting cycles on the crack network patterns on clays. The results show that the cracking water content, surface cracking ratio, and the thickness of soil after drying all increase significantly with the increase of number of drying-wetting cycles. Vogel et al. (2005) employed image processing technology to analyze the dynamic process of the evolution of cracks on the surface of soils. The results demonstrated that the frequency distribution of crack intersection angle is not significantly affected by the drying-wetting cycle.

However, investigations about dynamics of crack patterns formation and related mechanisms in complex clayey soils such as loess are less frequent (Wei et al., 2021). The spatio-temporal evolution of the stress field in loess during drying-wetting cycles has not been quantitatively characterized, which leads to a gross lack of data on this material. Thus, the evolution of cracks and cracking mechanisms in loess with drying-wetting cycles will be my future research topic.

References:

Wei, X.; Gao, C.Y.; Liu, K. A review of cracking behavior and mechanism in clayey soils related to desiccation. Adv. Civ. Eng. 2020, Doi: 10.1155/2020/8880873.

Tang, C.S.; Zhu, C.; Cheng, Q.; Zeng, H.; Xu, J.J.; Tian, B.G.; Shi, B. Desiccation cracking of soils: A review of investigation approaches, underlying mechanisms, and influencing factors. Earth-Sci. Rev. 2021, 216, 103586.

Tang, C.S.; Shi, B.; Liu, C. Influencing factors of geometrical structure of surface shrinkage cracks in clayey soils. Eng. Geol. 2008, 101, 204−217.

Tang, C.S.; Cui, Y.J.; Tang, A.M. Experiment evidence on the temperature dependence of desiccation cracking behavior of clayey soils. Eng. Geol. 2010, 114, 261−266.

Tang, C.S.; Shi, B.; GU, K. Experimental investigation on evaporation process of water in soil during drying. Chinese Journal of Engineering Geology, 2011, 19, 875−881.

Vogel, H.J.; Hoffmann, H.; Roth, K. Studies of crack dynamics in clay soil: I. experimental methods, results, and morphological quantification. Geoderma, 2005, 125, 203−211.

Wei, X.; Hattab, M.; Taibi, S.; Bicalho, K.V.; Xu, L.; Fleureau, J.M. Crack development and coalescence process in drying clayey loess. Geomech. Eng. 2021, 25, 535-552.

Reviewer 2 Report

I have read the manuscript entitled “Influence of soluble salt NaCl on cracking characteristics and mechanism of loess”. This is an excellent manuscript that study about the influence of soluble salt content on the cracking characteristics and mechanism of loess is of great significance to engineering constructions, geological problems, and disaster prevention of salinized lands in loess regions. Generally, I believe the manuscript can interest the journal. Although, I am satisfied with the overall presentation and writing of the manuscript. I am agree to accept it in its current form after finishing typos errors.

Author Response

Response: Thank you very much for the comments. The authors really appreciate your interests and comments on our manuscript. All the typos errors have been checked and modified in the revised version.

Reviewer 3 Report

There are many grammatical and written English errors in the text. I have commented about these errors in the attached PDF of the manuscript. The authors need to fix these errors and address the following comments and resubmit for a re-review.

If paint has been sprayed over the soil surface to create a speckle pattern, could drying of the paint affect the results? This should be answered in the text. 

Lines 134-135: What is N? Define it before using it. 

Line 196: What do you mean by "mode of particles"?

Some Figures presenting the DIC analysis, do not contain the time. In other words, it is not clear that after how many hours of drying the images were taken. This information should be provided for Fig. 3 and Fig. 9. 

Line 333: define EDS

Add reference for the following items:

Line 71: The more salt the sample has, the lower the degree of crack on the surface of soil.

Lines 95-96: PSAC software.

Line 98: VIC-2D software (For example: Correlated Solutions 2023) or something similar.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you very much for the suggestions. All the grammatical and written English errors pointed out by the reviewer have been modified in the revised manuscript. In addition, the authors have carefully checked the through manuscript and the written English has been improved.

The other comments have been addressed in the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have addressed all my review comments.