Joule Heating and Arc-Fault-Induced Electrical Fires for Commercial-Grade Copper and Brass in Low-Voltage Electrical Systems
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The research paper entitled "Joule heating and Arc-fault-induced Electrical Fires for Commercial-grade Copper and Brass in Low-voltage Electrical Systems (Manuscript ID: applsci-1680724)” was reviewed. After reading the manuscript, I suggest to author to revise wisely for publication in Applied Sciences. Some important information's and measurement needed to support authors claim. Consider the following points to improve the quality of the manuscript (major revision).
- Novelty of the work should be established.
- Abstract is not clear. I think the authors have to write abstract again.
- The introduction section is very short. To increase the scientific of our research, please explain more for advantage and disadvantage of research.
- The quality of figures in the manuscript is not uniform.
- The authors must revise the manuscript carefully to eliminate grammatical errors and typo-errors.
- What is the conclusion of this research? What problem does this research solve in the world?
- Authors should compare the results of this research with previous studies.
Author Response
I greatly appreciate you on reviewing and commenting our work. Your comment is valuable to us to make this work even better. However, I believe that there might be some misunderstanding in some parts. I would like to clarify following points:
1. Claim 1 and 3 : "Novelty of the work should be established.","The introduction section is very short. To increase the scientific of our research, please explain more for advantage and disadvantage of research."
Answer : We divided our introduction into two parts. The main introduction and 1.1 As a subsection of the introduction. This article is not intended to create a better solution to the problem. Our main contribution is to clarify the knowledge gap in the literatures which none of the previous study is able to fully explain the the underlying mechanism in the problem. This research main novelty is the full explanation of the phenomena and the means to study in more details in a correct heading.
Other claims has beeen improved as suggested
Claim 2 : Abstract has been partially rewritten
Claim 4 : Figures has been redone and improved to be uniform with other figures
Claim 5 : The typos seems to be the problem of file encoding. Other typos has been removed
Claim 6 : Conclusion has been extended
Claim 7 : two main references directly linked to this study has been added.
Reviewer 2 Report
Review comments for
Manuscript ID: applsci-1680724-peer-review-v1
Title: Joule heating and Arc-fault-induced Electrical Fires for Commercial grade Copper and Brass in Low-voltage Electrical Systems
Sittichai Wangwiwattana, Koike Yoshikazu
Submitted to: Applied Sciences
Comments:
The submitted manuscript investigated the arc-discharge mechanisms of commercially available cupper and brass-based electrical plugs in their respective sockets.
The work is well organized and could be useful for a large audience however, comparison with the previous literature is not properly compared with this work. Due to this fact, the positioning and importance of the work can not be defined.
Authors should be given a chance to describe the new findings and performance values should be differentiated from previous publications. Currently, this is absent and can not justify the importance of the work. The current form of the manuscript is premature in its current format and needs a major revision.
The issues listed below are critical for the publication and need major consideration to justify all manuscript claims, logical justifications, and clarity.
- There are a few typo mistakes in the manuscript. For example, on page 8, line 300: the symbol of the resistance unit is unclear. This should be corrected throughout the manuscript.
- 4: The voltage drops (red circles) in the neutral lines are not well understood and not discussed elaborately in the manuscript. On the contrary, previous literature (for example Ref. 8) shows a sharp spike in the voltage line however, the voltage is dropped in this work. What is the reason behind this contradictory behavior is not discussed adequately in the current version of the manuscript. This should be discussed elaborately with proper references.
- Comparison with the previous literature is not properly compared with this work. This is lacking in the manuscript. The performance/analysis output described in the previous literature should be plotted or tabulated with the current work and discussed elaborately. This should justify the importance of this work.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The quality of the work, the level of results and the design were done at a high level, but the relevance and soundness of the article is questionable.
Author Response
I greatly appreciate you on reviewing and commenting our work. Your comment is valuable to us to make this work even better. We have added two more main references that directly linked to this work.
Reviewer 4 Report
I found the topic interesting but I would like to highlight some aspects of the document that should be improved:
1.- The references used in the document are few and old. It gives the feeling that it is not a hot topic or that the references used are poor.
2.- The structure chosen for the document is very strange and reading is not smooth. For example, the introduction only includes 2 references to a web page, which is clearly unusual for such a document, and includes a subsection 1.1. without apparent justification and the same occurs with section 3.1. and 4.1 when there are no more paragraphs in the section. Section 2 is more of a historical overview than a current state of the art.
3.- The conclusions presented, after 18 pages of work, turn out to be obvious that they do not delve into the work carried out.
4.- It seems obvious that if figures 6 and 7 show the effects with and without arc-fault (which, by the way, changes the way of writing it throughout the document), with figures 11 and 12 and 13 and 14 they maintain the same structure and group them.
5.- In general, in the sections of the document, and particularly in section 5, many things are explained in the text, but they are disorganized, causing the reader to get lost and tire of reading.
6.- I do not understand the ranges of temperatures and resistances used in Table 1.
7.- Figure 6 has no legend.
8.- If Fig. 7 represents an FFT, why are the units on the vertical axis "velocity (V/CM/s"? The FFT does not use those units of measurement.
9.- If the results are shown in Section 5, why don't you show figures 9-12 there?
10.- In figures 9-12 the scale has not been included and it is not clear to which test the images correspond.
Author Response
I greatly appreciate you on reviewing and commenting our work. Your comment is valuable to us to make this work even better. However, I believe that there might be some part in the article that may need to be clarify.
1. Claim 1 : "The references used in the document are few and old....."
Answer : Unfortunately the study on glowing connection and arc-fault was no longer a popular topic. In previous studies. Researcher were able to put into conclusion that this type of fire hazard can be causes by a damaged contact points. The damaged contact point exhibit a certain behaviour which can be used to create and design a detection device. However the devices created from previous research does not actually detect the actual mechanism that causes such problem and accuracy of the detection is not of ideal. We also believe that it is better to prevent the incident entirely from the source of the problem, not after the incident has already happened. This research main intent is to clarify that the underlying problem in the phenomena is not of just electrical problem. But more than half of the mechanism is in the side of Mechanical engineering and Material science. We believed that this research will be able to put this topic back into the stage and spread the knowledge about safety risk in every devices in our home.
2. Claim 2 : "The structure chosen for the document is very strange and......"
Answer : We believed that dividing our article into smaller subsection will be easier for reader to understand and catch up. Section two is just an explanation to previous studies by other researchers. Which is used to convey to the reader that the mechanism of this phenomena is not yet understood and no common ground have yet to be found.
3. Claim 4,5,9 : "It seems obvious that if figures 6 and 7 ......." , "In general, in the sections of the document, and particularly in section 5, "
Answer : We divided these into smaller sections hoping that reader will be able to understand characteristic of the phenomenon in block by block.
Figure 8-14 was separated into discussion because the mechanism that causes the waveform to behave in such a way is not of by just electrical properties.
4. Claim 6 : "6.- I do not understand the ranges of temperatures and resistances used in Table 1."
Answer : The temperature is coresponded to the temperature value. For sameple 1, at 21C . The resistance is infinite , at 122C the resistance value is at 124kOhm at 238C the resistance value is at 16kOhm and at 520C the resistance value is at 530Ohm
Other claims has been improved as suggested
Claim 3 : Conclusion has been extended
Claim 7 : Legend has been added
Claim 8 : FFT Vertical axis has been fixed. My apology for this mistake
Claim 10 : Scales has been added
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Accept
Author Response
We appreciated your valuable guidance. Thank you.
Reviewer 2 Report
Review comments for
Manuscript ID: applsci-1680724-peer-review-v2
Title: Joule heating and Arc-fault-induced Electrical Fires for Commercial grade Copper and Brass in Low-voltage Electrical Systems
Sittichai Wangwiwattana, Koike Yoshikazu
Submitted to: Applied Sciences
Comments:
All the concerns/comments are considered carefully, and the authors have modified the manuscript accordingly. The modifications improved the manuscript quality and readability. The review article is appropriately represented and easily understandable. I recommend the current version of the manuscript for publication.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
We appreciated your valuable guidance. Thank you.
Reviewer 4 Report
The authors have improved the figure legends and the conclusions. They have not improved the rest of the comments.
Author Response
I am greatly appreciate on the second review. We would like to further clear up certain misconception.
The matter of Figure 9 10 11 12 13 14. We have adjusted most of the points you mention, except, the Arc Characteristic in section 5 might unrelated to the Contact surface inspection in section 6. By moving there, we afraid it might change the meaning of the message. Nonetheless, anything that we can adjust, we have reviewed and revised as appropriated. Thank you.
Claim 5 : A paragraph on the section 5 to explain other subsection has been added and some of the wording has been change to improve the reability of the section
