Study on Flow Field and Rotor Safety Characteristics of MSPs Based on Flow Thermo-Coupling

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

All of my comments are taken into account except one. In response to my comment pointing out that "The authors' contribution section is missing at the end.", the authors respond that the modifications have been completed. But I still do not see that section. This should be added before the reference section. 

I recommend the publication once that minor change is made.  

Author Response

请参阅附件。

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

In this article a study on flow field and molten salt pump characteristics are presented and after minor revision should be published.

Comments:

1) Introduction – the structure of the article (content) should be shortly presented at the end of the Introduction

Reply: According to comment 1, the structure of the article content has been be presented at the end of the Introduction. Already added “In this paper, the flow-thermal-coupling solution strategy is adopted to solve the fluid domain and the domain separately in their respective coordinate systems. Through the coupling interface for bidirectional data transmission, the effects of material properties changes on the structural performance of high temperature molten salt pump at different temperatures were studied. The strain distribution and stress distribution of the molten salt pump rotor components under different loads were investigated.”

Ad 1) the short content of the article should be presented at the end of the Introduction, i.e. “in the introduction is presented…, in the research methods point are described…” and so on.

2) Fig. 1 and line 82 – if variables of the pump are optimized it should be described with more specified data i.e. what method, exactly which data etc.

Reply: According to comment 2, Figure 1 has been modified.

Ad 2) still missing information about variables of the pump, if they are optimized it should be described with more specified data i.e. what method of optimization, exactly which data were optimized etc.

6) fig. 8b – how was obtained data between measurement points in “test (water)” curve?

Reply: According to comment 6, the schematic diagram of Figure. 8 is shown in Figure 8(c).

Ad 6) fig. 8b – how was obtained data between measurement points in “test (water)” curve? This is not about test stand but about how authors approximate solid lines between measured points for “test water” curve

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The explanations for the turbulence models is sufficient, though there are still grammatical issues with the English language presentation.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

The paper presents the results of numerical studies on a pump transporting liquid at high temperatures. The following are comments on the publication:

It would be good to improve the English style in general.

Drawings should be inserted in better resolution.

Figure 2 should be inserted as a vector graphic.

On page 6 (5th line) should be "Figure 6", not "Figure 5".

In the analysis of numerical results section, you should extend the discussion to include literature results.

Author Response

It would be good to improve the English style in general.

Reply: According to the comment 1, the English style of the article has been improved.

Drawings should be inserted in better resolution.

Reply: According to the comment 2, Drawings have been inserted in better resolution.

Figure 2 should be inserted as a vector graphic.

Reply: According to the comment 3, Figure 2 has been inserted as a vector graphic.

On page 6 (5th line) should be "Figure 6", not "Figure 5".

Reply: According to the comment 4, "Figure 6" has been modified to "Figure 5" on page 6 (line 5).

In the analysis of numerical results section, you should extend the discussion to include literature results.

Reply: According to the comment 5, The Discussion chapter has been added to the article.

The attachment is the revised article. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

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

Page 3 Describe the symbols from Table 1.
Page 5 It would be good to write for what coefficients the STT model was used.
Page 8 It would be good to insert a scheme of the test stand.
In figures 11-14 please add units.
In chapter 4 it would be worth developing the discussion and referring to literature.

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper is of high interest considering the topic of molten salt pump operations.   The work is of good quality, though the presentation of the paper needs some improvement.  

There are several locations where English language problems are persistent and distracting.  It is recommended that a native English speaker review and revise the paper for readability.

The motivation for model selections are not sufficient for the research.  For example, no justification for WHY the SST turbulence model is selected are given or why this selection is appropriate.  These justifications should be added for each of the models selected for both the CFD and FEA portions of the paper.

The results are presented well and are both novel and interesting.

Reviewer 3 Report

In this article a study on flow field and molten salt pump characteristics are presented and after minor revision should be published.

Comments:

1) Introduction – the structure of the article (content) should be shortly presented at the end of the Introduction

2) Fig. 1 and line 82 – if variables of the pump are optimized it should be described with more specified data i.e. what method, exactly which data etc.

3) fig. 1 – arrow starting from “fluid computing domain model” is in wrong direction

4) in the article there is needed nomenclature list , some parameters are presented without explanation or without units (table 1: “Z, Z1, Qd, Hd”; table 2: “K” unit missing; unit in figure 5 in description of horizontal axis; parameter Q)

5) Figure 3 – how long is the section of outlet pipe and suction pipe assumed in the calculations?

6) fig. 8b – how was obtained data between measurement points in “test (water)” curve?

7) point 4.3, the last sentence of first paragraph - the sentence is very difficult to understand   

8) paragraphs above point 4.4 – above “first of all…” - there is no continuity of thoughts to the next paragraph (something missing?)

Reviewer 4 Report

The paper presents a study on high temperature molten salt pumps at various operating conditions using ANSYS. Here are my specific comments on the manuscript.

Major comments:

The paper is hard to follow. Many sections of the paper need to be paraphrased to make it easy to understand. There are many typos and grammatical errors, some of them are listed in the minor comments below. The paper assumes that the reader is familiar with the inner workings of ANSYS. I am not apt in ANSYS as much as the authors assume. So it is very difficult for me to follow the paper. The overall style of the paper is like a report.   Crucial details of the simulations are missing. What were the parameters of the CFX simulations like Re etc? What is the parameter difference between the simulation with water and molten salt?  The FEM simulations for the solid phase are not described at all. The authors say that experiments were conducted (figure 8) but the details of the experiments are missing.  The authors check grid independence of the fluid simulation by looking at the hydraulic efficiency alone. What about the field variables like pressure and velocity? Do they become grid independent too?  All figures need a more detailed caption.  What is “Q” in line 153 of page 6? Is it the design Q? Plot spectra of Cp also in figure 10. Was the simulation for each case only run for 1 time period? The second paragraph of page 13 appears to be wrong. Figure 12 is not stress distribution.  What does the authors mean by “the intensity of the impeller material” on page 13 ?   The authors contribution section is missing at the end. 

Minor comments:

The phrase “high temperature molten salt pump” is repeated 6 times in the abstract alone. I suggest the authors to either use an acronym or use “the pump” after the first time the phrase appears.  Page 1 line 37: Replace “It is found” with “It was found”. Page 1 line 40: Replace “a trend of increasing” with “an increasing trend”. Page 2 line 55: Add “problems” at the end of the line. Page 2 line 63: Clarify the meaning of “centrifugal pump field”. Page 2 line 79: Replace “flow” by “flow chart”.  Page 3 line 82: Clarify the meaning of “the prior art”.   Page 5 line 122: The information should be tabulated.  Page 6 line 148: What is “r/min” ? Page 6 line 151: Rephrase the line.  The citations appearing in the text are not consistent. Sometimes it is last name alone whereas other times it is full name or abbreviated first name.  References are not consistent. Also, their number is not mentioned in the text. 

Overall, the topic of research is interesting but the work and the conclusions are not well supported. The validity of the simulations at such high temperatures is also questionable.  The paper needs more work and massive rewriting keeping the above suggestions in mind before it can be considered for publication. Therefore, I do not recommend publication of the paper in its present form.