A Rapid Method to Noninvasively Measure the Viscoelastic Properties of Synthetic Polymers Using Mechanical Vibrations and Photonics
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
In this work, the authors apply a VOCT system to assess the viscoelastic properties of synthetic polymers. This method is used to compare the viscoelastic properties of silicone polymers to standard tensile stress-strain measurements. And the authors point out that the VOCT results are similar to conventional tensile testing results. However, some key points have not been mentioned or discussed in sufficient detail (see comments listed below). Only if these discussions are included in the revision, I recommend this paper for publication.
1. Please describe how does the vibration signal look like?
2. How did you get Figure 1? Did you use the Fourier transform? If yes, please give the detailed process. If not, I am afraid that the accuracy of the results is questionable since the frequency does not seem to be rigorously determined.
3. Please demonstrate the principle of viscosity calculation in detail. And please give the error estimate of this calculation method.
4. Please describe how did you get Figure 5.
5. Compared with your previous work published in 2020, what is the highlight of this article besides the rough viscosity determination?
Author Response
see file attached
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Page 3, insufficient detail on the particular setup for VOCT measurements. Please provide enough information to allow the reader to reproduce the experiment, such as a setup diagram. A reader should not have to look for such key details in other references. Importantly, there should be a focus on any OCT / VOCT parameters and there should be a discussion of the importance of these parameters in relation to the significance of the data acquired.
Page 6, Fig 2 caption please use the term "resonant frequency peak" rather than "major peak", to avoid confusion
Page 7, line 257 "Figure 5 illustrates the application of this imaging technique to visualize the surface of materials during VOCT testing" this does not seem to be the case, unless I am misinterpreting Figure 5
Page 8, Fig 4 should be clearly denoted a), b), c), d) for clarity
Page 9, Fig 5 not clear that the vertical scale is meant to go from 0 to 60%, since it shows an upper limit of 0.6. Please clarify.
Page 9, lines 296-297 would benefit from some references for the methods quoted
Page 9, Table 1 data - might it be better presented as a graph?
Page 10, line 306 please explain why the 80Hz peak mentioned earlier on page 4 is now a 90Hz peak.
Page 10, line 349: Please rephrase "Our results suggest that: (1) at 7 days is the moduli measured using conventional tensile testing and VOCT are similar" in a grammatically correct fashion
Author Response
see file attached
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I recommended this manuscript to be published.
Reviewer 2 Report
Thanks for making the changes requested
