Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript entitled „Experimental study on performance of modified cement-based building materials under high water pressure surrounding rock environment” is a research article that I find interesting but of medium overall quality. I recommend the paper to be published after majora revision. 

1. Editing needs improvement. There are a lot of mistakes. For example space missing (line 16 “environment.In”), space missing between number and unit (line 26 “> 1m/s”), space missing before reference (“used[1,2]”), line 151 not proper display (“40×10-3”), not necessary equal sing (lining = 6.7 m, ) and a lot more.

It gives an impression that the manuscript is of worse quality, than it actually is. Careful preparation of article would give much better opinion.

2. Line 24 “the additive boric acid can significantly speed up the slurry gel time” – it is interesting because BA is a retarder foe OPC. However it may cooperate with PVE it is not clear in the article.

The action of BA should be precisely described in introduction and in section 3. It should be properly supported by literaturę results.

The cooperation of BA and PVA should be described and supported as well.

Line 244 „Due to the chemical crosslinking 244 between boric acid and PVA, the compressive strength increases.” – it is exactly what should be extended.

3. The introduction is supported only by 15 references – it is too short in my opinion.

4. Line 123 “(two parts water, one part cement) (200 g water, 100 g cement)” – not necessary doubling information

5. Line 126 „water-to-cement ratios” water-cement ratio is enough. „to” is not necessary

6. The figure 4 and fig 9 is not necessary. It should be only described in the text.

7. Lines 138-141 „The experimental materials were prepared in accordance with various mixing ratios, including 50 g of water to 100 g of cement in a water-cement ratio of 0.5, 100 g of water to 100 g of cement in a water-cement ratio of 1:1, and 200 g of water to 100 g of cement in a water-cement ratio of 2:1.” This was described before.

8. Figure 8 – the day of testing should be indicated

The behaviour of BA improving compressive strength is strange. See p.2 above.

9. Figures 12 and 13 are not necessary

10. References 17, 18, 27  needs the reasons for usage where are put given in the text. It is unclear if authors cite something from literature or support own research data with other results.

11. The discussion section should be backed up by external references.

 

A lot of issues needs to be addressed, but please accept the appreciation:

1. the methodology and experiment are carried out correctly, but they need more description.

2. The model given is a nice illustration for the article.

 

Author Response

Please see attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The presented article is well structured and presented. The results obtained are of scientific value. There is one remark: the methods of statistical processing of the results (the number of samples for each type of test) are not indicated in the research methods. In Figures 1-6, it is necessary to show the statistical spread of the results obtained. In general conclusions, the patterns obtained can be related by a correlation coefficient.

Author Response

Please see attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

In my opinin the article "Experimental study on performance of modified cement-based building materials under high water pressure surrounding rock environment" is suitable for publication in present form.

Authors adressed all my comments and corrected the manuscript accordingly.