Comparison of Two Sulfate-Bearing Soils Stabilized with Reactive Magnesia-Activated Ground Granulated Blast Furnace Slag: Swelling, Strength, and Mechanism

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In this paper, a comparison of two sulfate-bearing soils stabilized with reactive magnesia-activated ground granulated blastfurnace slag were presented. This is a very important subject. However, I have gone through carefully the content and would like to inform that the manuscript was not professionally prepared. Some specific comments are as follows: (1) From my point of view the introduction is too short. Please emphasize on works recently done (not older than 5 years). (2) All references are cited in a wrong way. Please check the instructions for the authors. (3) What is the hypothesis of this work? (4) All figures should be prepared according to the journal instructions. (5) Please underline what is the novelty in the test methods. (6) The discussion chapter should be improved. The purpose of the discussion section is to interpret and describe the significance of your findings in relation to what was already known about the research problem. More references should be added. (7) Figure 10 is unreadable. (8) References should be completed. References should be written according to the journal instructions.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

This is experiment-based research investigating the treatment of sulfate-bearing soils with MgO-GGBS. Generally, it is a well-structured paper, but minor improvements are needed before it can be published.

(1) Introduction: are there any engineering failure cases due to the swelling of sulfate-bearing soils? It could strengthen the significance of the research.

(2) MgO and GGBS-stabilized soils have been investigated extensively over the past two decades - could the authors provide a quantitative summary about the UCS, permeability, and durability of these published studies?

(3) Methods: what's the reason for using the sulfate concentration of 20000ppm? Presumably, with a lower concentration the swelling will be less significant, and to what extent?

(4) Was the swelling test also conducted on replicate samples? If so, there was no error bar in Figures 4 & 5.

(5) In Figure 6, the sulfate soil's strength also increased (without error bars again) after 28-day curing. Considering there were no cementitious binders in the soil samples, why was there a strength growth?

(6) High-resolution SEM pictures are needed.

(7) Mechanism: Could the authors produce a Figure to explain the proposed mechanisms?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf