Experimental Study on Physical and Rheological Properties of Trinidad Lake Asphalt Modified Binder
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The herein study, i.e. "Experimental Study on Physical and Rheological Properties of Trinidad Lake Asphalt Modified Binder" submitted to the Applied Sciences, is of some relevance for the current body of knowledge of the scientific domain related to the use of Trinidad Lake Asphalt Modified Binder in bridge pavement systems.
The article is interesting, and it is clearly written.
The author may make use of the following comments:
Introduction
Line 59 lacks a reference to the Polish Road Administration document.
"..., the chosen TLA content was optimized also based on the life-cycle pavement cost analysis (LCCA)." Why this study was not presented?
The literature should be extended to highlight the importance of this study from the scientific point of view.
Materials and Methods
Table 2 as note 1 where is the description?
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
In this study, the TLA modified binders to be used in mastic asphalt bridge pavement system were evaluated to develop the optimum material combination by using conventional and performance-related testing. Physical and rheological tests were conducted on TLA-modified binders with five different dosages of the modifier. Generally speaking, this paper is well-organized and can be of general interest to the readers of Materials. However, this paper lacks innovative findings. The test results can even be expected without doing any tests. This is more like a project report rather than a research paper. The conclusions are generally about the test results. More general conclusions should be made and the underlying mechanism should be discussed.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
1) This paper appears to be an interesting contribution to research on the role of the ‘Trinidad Lake Asphalt Modified Binder’ in the ‘performance properties of Mastic asphalt (MA)’;
2) Its ‘Experimental nature’ gives the paper a strong academic and scientific value which makes it a suitable contribution to the international peer-reviewed journal Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417; CODEN: ASPCC7);
3) The paper seems to have been well planned and implemented. For instance, the ‘Abstract’, although ‘short’ is in my opinion, complete, informative and self-sufficient; the ‘Introduction´ appears to be ‘up-to-date’ and comprehensive enough; the ‘Results’ are presented with enough detail and discussed and critically analysed; the ‘Main Conclusions’ outlined in the paper are mainly supported by ‘3. Results and Discussion’ section;
4) However, despite the comments made previously, there are still a few minor spell checking, formatting and writing issues that should be addressed by the authors. See, for instance, the “examples” listed below:
- Lines 69 and 124: ABBREVIATION CITATION RULES: its meaning should be introduced next to its first quote in the text: see for instance, the case of ‘DSR’ (see, for instance, line 69 and 124, for a good ‘example’) ; search, please, the text for ‘other examples’ (the bad ones);
- Line 210: CHECK ENGLISH: “A??? shown in Figure 1 the penetration value depends on the TLA content”;
- Line 363, CHECK THE SECTION NUMBERING, please??? (see, for instance, the case: ‘5.?? Conclusions’).
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
Authors of the submitted manuscript deal with an experimental study of physical and rheological properties of the mastic asphalt modified by a Trinidad Lake Asphalt binder. For this purpose, they find an optimal ratio of the compounds in prepared mixtures. They evaluate studied properties by selected physical and rheological tests.
The studied topic is beneficial from the technological point of view. But I suggest revisions of the manuscript, as follows:
- In the Methods section, the authors should describe in more detail how many samples were evaluated. How many times did they repeat experiments?
- In Conclusions, the authors should mention how they anticipate that further studies will continue. How will the current results be used?
- Figures 6-12, 15: Text labels should be larger. They are difficult to read.
- Line 251: Abbreviation IP should be explained.
- Line 121: There is a grammar mistake „… that that …“
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 5 Report
Although the experimental methods in this paper are used in some published papers, and the cross model are also used for modeling the rheological property of asphalt binders. That means that the methods and the model used in this paper are not very novel, but Mastic asphalt for bridge pavement is very interesting topic. I would recommend acceptance of this paper. Below are the comments on the paper.
Comments
This paper conducted experimental investigation on physical and rheological properties of TLA-modified binders with five TLA contents in the range of 10% to 50% (percent by weight). Discussions were made about the physical and rheological properties of the five TLA modified binders, and comparisons of those properties were carried out between the 35/50 base bitumen and the bitumen with the five TLA modified binders, respectively. The scheme of this paper is logical. The content of the experiment is abundant. The appropriate methods are used for investigating the physical and rheological properties of the investigated objects. The authors give out detailed discussion on measured results. The outcomes from this paper are useful in improving the design of Mastic asphalts for bridge pavement and road. On the other hand, there are points that deserve attention, which might improve the manuscript.
The authors mentioned that the differences are not small between the calculated values from Equation (2) and the corresponding measured values. Was Equation (2) presented to show its limitations for application?
The results from this investigation are applicable to practical applications. It may be better to make discussion about the application in bridge pavement.
Line 19 Suggest the authors to replace “what” with “which”.
Line 36 -37 It would be better to rephase “penetration reduction and softening point increase” as “reduction in penetration and increase in softening”.
Line 56 Delete a comma (,) before “that”.
Line 58 Add a comma (,) after administration.
Line 61 Add a comma (,) after [16].
Line 77-78 Rephrase “which basic properties” as “basic properties of which”.
Table 1 and 2 If the numbers such as “0,6”, “1,5”, “0,5” and “1,0” are decimals，it is better to write them as “0.6”, “1.5”, “0.5” and “1.0”.
Line 121 Suggest the author to rephrase “that binder” as “the binder”.
Line 124 Delete “as more suitable”.
Line 132 It may need to rephrase “The first value” as “The first parameter”.
Line 143 Rephrase “representative of traffic loading” as”, which is representative of traffic loading”.
Line 151 Rephrase “available literature” as “available literatures”.
Line 189 Suggest the authors delete “This is example 1 of an equation:” This sentence is unnecessary.
Line 197 Rephrase “the same test geometry” as “the same test configuration”.
Line 210 “A shown in Figure 1” should be “As shown I n Figure 1,”.
Line 226 Add a comma (,) after binder.
Line 227 Rephrase “for the Polish climate conditions” as “under the Polish climate conditions” and add a comma (,) after content.
Line 235-236 Suggest the authors to rephrase “where almost the same Fraass breaking point as for 10% TLA was obtained.” as “where the Fraass breaking point is almost same as the one for 10% TLA.”.
Line 288-289 Since G* is on the vertical axis and on the horizontal axis, it should be written as” the plots of complex modulus versus phase angle (δ)”.
Line 313 Add comma (,) after “binders”.
Line 339 It should be “which” instead of “what”.
Line 343 Delete “for” after “as”.
Line 356-358 A percent difference of 10% is not an acceptable one for all the engineering applications. Is this percent difference good for the Mastic asphalt?
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have tried to revise this manuscript based on the comments and it should be ready for publication.
Author Response
We did our best to improve our paper according to Reviewer’s opinion. According to the latest opinion of the Reviewer 2, the paper is ready for publication. Moreover, the additional spell check of English language and style has been also performed, as suggested by the Reviewer. The authors would like to thank the Reviewer very much for valuable comments.
Reviewer 4 Report
The authors accepted my comments and suggestions. Now I see only one mistake in the manuscript:
- Figure 13 is missing
Author Response
We did our best to improve our paper according to Reviewer’s opinion. According to the latest opinion of the Reviewer 2, the authors accepted the Reviewer’s comments and suggestions. Figure 13 has been put in the text in the right way. Moreover, the additional spell check of English language and style has been also performed, as suggested by the Reviewer. The authors would like to thank the Reviewer very much for valuable comments.
