Shear Behavior of Recycled Coarse Aggregates Concrete Dry Joints Keys Using Digital Image Correlation Technique

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper deals with a very interesting study on the connections between concretes castat different times with the application of recycled aggregate concrete. The topic is undoubtedly important from a practical point of view. The use of DIC to track joint deformation is also noteworthy.

However, the manuscript needs to be corrected and completed. Some statements are too general and need to be discussed in more detail. Linguistic awkwardness was found in the text as well as numerous repetitions (synonyms should be used).

Suggestions for changes are included as comments in the attached file

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Journal: infrastructures

Title: Shear behavior of recycled coarse aggregates concrete dry joints keys using digital image correlation technique

The authors investigate Shear behavior of recycled coarse aggregates concrete dry joints keys using digital image correlation technique. This paper presents a lot of interesting analysis results and easy to follow and well-organized, and the presented results are also helpful to better understand Shear behavior of recycled coarse aggregates concrete dry joints keys. This paper is worth getting published by applied sciences at MDPI after some minor revisions. Detailed comments are listed below.

Key comments

1.      Page 1, Line 11, the word “submitted” expressed by other word.

2.      Page 1, Line 19, how much “similar”? quantify in percentage or ratio.

3.      Page 5, line 180, the word “…for this.” is not necessary.

4.      Page 14, line 357, 359, the word “gathered” expressed by other word.

5.      Spacing before and after table with text need to be revised.

6.      In the introduction section, as per the authors, there are some experiments and tests previously; authors should clarify by evidence showing gaping of previous studies for novelty.

7.      The author need to describes about digital image correlation type of camera, field of vision, pixels sizes, programming used for analysis (Python or matlab code). Then readers easily recognize the full test setup.

Better to rewrite as follow… “In this research the installation of the test sample surface deformation measurement system by the image processing method (DIC) was performed by …… camera, configured with a maximum resolution of …… x …… pixels, placed on a tripod stand, …… mm from the object (FOV), which was attached. Set up a Canon Lens ……lens with a minimum focus distance of …… m and a maximum focus distance of 0.35 m, which is illuminated by …… LED lamps of ……watts with a brightness of ……lux to control the brightness level of the sample surface plane to be consistent throughout the test.”

8.      Page 12, Figure 11, need to contain the DIC setup too (not only specimen).

9.      Result and discussion chapters seem a little lengthier, so it might be better if it makes compactable.

10.  The conclusion seems a little generic, so, the authors should try to present a more novel and concrete conclusion rather than a generic one.

11.  Reference, most of them have not journal name, volume and issue number, for instance reference number 10,18,25,25,26,27,28,30,32,39., make them the correct format. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

TITLE: Shear behavior of recycled coarse aggregates concrete dry joints keys using digital image correlation technique

Minor revision

1.  The shear properties of the dry joints of recycled coarse aggregate concrete are discussed in the abstract, but the digital image correlation method is missing.

2. The novelty of the study is not apparent enough. In the introduction section, please highlight the main contribution of your work by placing it in context with the work that has been done previously in the same domain.

3. The authors may add more state-of-art articles for the integrity of the introduction (Mechanical behavior and constitutive model of sustainable concrete: Seawater and sea-sand recycled aggregate concrete. Construction and Building Materials 2023, 364, 130010.).

4. In this paper, the shear performance of recycled coarse aggregate concrete's dry joint is studied using digital image correlation technology. Is digital image correlation technology the critical technology of this paper? But the article does not seem to address the advantages of the technology associated with displaying digital images.

5. Vision technology integrated with deep learning has been emerging in various engineering fields these years. For object detection, please refer to Automatic classification of asphalt pavement cracks using a novel integrated generative adversarial networks and improved VGG model; Novel visual crack width measurement based on backbone double-scale features for improved detection automation.

6. It should mention the scope for further research as well as the implications/application of the study.

7. This article is more like an experiment report. The article adopts many literature methods and formulas, but I haven't seen your method. Is it just an experiment based on previous methods and formulas? Please clarify.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx