Practical Application of Nanotechnology Solutions in Pavement Engineering: Construction Practices Successfully Implemented on Roads (Highways to Local Access Roads) Using Marginal Granular Materials Stabilised with New-Age (Nano) Modified Emulsions (NME)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Despite not being a scientific article, the work proposes a practical approach on the stabilization of low-quality soils using nanomaterials. In my view, the work match the scope of the special section Nanotechnology and Applied Nanosciences.

Major concern:

what are the benefits in terms of strength or deformability of materials treated with this technique? Provide a reference and discuss this issue in one paragraph, preferably with numerical data. That is, in terms of UCS or CBR, how the characteristics of these materials can be improved using applicable nanotechnologies?

Minor issues:

- Line 55: The word "based" is written 3 times. Please rephrase. 

- check punctuation throughout the text (e.g., lines 60, 132, 167, 737)

- check the word "full-sale" (line 98)

- Toxicology and environmental factors are not secondary issues, but they are of utmost importance for the engineering of road works. (line 123)

- grammatical error in line 190

- check possible inconsistency (spacing) of lines in the table represented in Figure 2

- check the formatting of subtitles (line 312)

- check all parentheses throughout the text. Some of them were not closed properly (e.g., line 469)

- Lines 602 - 608: is there any reference on the bearing capacity or compaction energy for the NME stabilisation of granular materials ?

 

Author Response

Please find the response in the attached file.

The reviewer is thanked for the time spent and thoroughness of the comments received.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Practical and interesting paper. There are some comments:

1. The Keywords presented are not really keywords. Please shorten the descriptions.
2. Please present clearly the objectives of the paper.
3. The Fig. 1 could be better presented as Table. Also the font size is too large.
4. The Fig. 2 and 3 are also tables. There are the result of authors previous analysis [see ref. 6 and 7]. But those figures (tables?) are unclear. Please explain abbreviations, for ex. 40 A means 4 cm of wearing course asphalt layer?
5. The aim of the paper is NME practical application not pavement structure analysis. 
6. In the Conclusions authors summarize the advantages of NME technology application. But what about limitations? Please add also limitations into the paper and in Conclusions par . If that technology has only advantages why is not widely used in other countries?

Author Response

Please find the response in the attached document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the response to my comments.

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

Jordaan and co-worker provided much useful and detailed information on road construction and maintenance, specially on the application of modified emulsion for the stabilization of natural materials. As I have worked on road design and construction for several years, I can say that the authors are world-class road designers. Additionally, the development of innovative solutions to enhance road works is a prerequisite for sustainable development. However, I have major concerns with the text that I respectfully ask Jordaan and co-worker to address. I am recommending a substantial review of the paper at this time because, to properly address the issues, more than 50% of the paper will have to be replaced and modified.

 Major issues:

1. A clear problem statement, research gaps and aims of the work are missing. The authors are trying to evaluate the constructability of pavement layers using modified emulsion, but it seems that there is no difference between the application of this new emulsion and a regular one. The proposed method has been used in similar form by practitioners and it remains unclear what is new on the methodology.
2. Lack of literature review. As the authors’ method is not compared with regular pavement construction, without citation of previous related works, this lack of literature review leads me to assume that the method was not used elsewhere. What is more, I am not fully convinced about the application of NME since only references from the authors’ group has been provided.
3. The text was not written as a scientific work. The text seems to be a good manual applicable to paving. Yet, it remains unclear what is new on the NME methodology and which new scientific insights are gained compared to established methods.
4. There are many parentheses without proper punctuation and misspelled words. This makes reading tremendously difficult.
5. The number of figures is excessive (68?), mostly bad-quality figures. The number of figures can be shortened substantially. It should concentrate on what was actually important to the readers.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper aims to introduce the constructability of road pavement layers using New-age (Nano) Modified Emulsion (NME) stabilisation of naturally available granular materials. While it almost only introduces the concept of constructability without focusing on the constructability of this material, which is far away from the topic. The specific problems are as follows:  

1. Lack of relevant data to demonstrate the constructibility of this material.

2. The structure of the article is chaotic, and every part of it is not clear enough.

3. The section of abstract and the introduction are partly repeated.

4. The content of Introduction is not very relevant to the topic of the study, it is recommended to refer to some references from home and abroad which are related to this study.

5. The third part quotes too much reference "[8]".

6. Almost all the figures are not clear.

7. It is recommended to optimize the layout of all figures, such as Fig.22- Fig.31, Fig.32- Fig.46, etc.

Reviewer 3 Report

Interesting report with the use of new technology. It is not a scientific article, there is no research carried out on newly created surfaces. There are no comparisons to the traditional solution of the road pavement. A scientific article should not be as long as 57 pages. The manuscript submitted for review is more like a technical report on the application of a new technology. The drawings are of very poor quality, they are illegible.
After performing the research, due to the properties of the appropriate layers of the road surface structure and comparing the obtained results with the results from the traditional pavement, you can try to edit the article and send it to the journal. The article is not suitable for publication.