Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This manuscript, titled “Analysis of Cutting Parameters on Cutting Force and Temperature in Thermo-Mechanical Coupled Orthogonal Cutting of Polyethylene (PE)”, This paper establishes a thermo‑mechanically coupled finite‑element model for orthogonal cutting of polyethylene, and investigates the effects of cutting speed and cutting depth on cutting force, cutting temperature and chip morphology. The topic is of engineering reference value for polymer‑material machining with a complete modelling framework. Nevertheless, several deficiencies exist in model validation, experimental benchmarking, figures and tables, parameter settings, references and discussion logic. Acceptance will be considered after revision and improvement, and the detailed comments are presented as follows:

1. In the model validation section, the maximum relative error between the cutting force simulation and the experimental results from the literature reaches 16.81%. This error is relatively large, and the manuscript only provides a brief explanation. It is recommended to conduct a systematic and detailed analysis of the sources of the error.
2. If publicly available experimental data on orthogonal cutting temperature for PE are accessible, a comparison between simulated and measured temperatures should be added, along with an analysis of the potential sources of discrepancy between the simulated and measured temperatures. If no citable public experimental temperature data are currently available, it must be explicitly stated in the manuscript that "the temperature results are only simulation predictions and have not yet been quantitatively validated by experiments," thereby clarifying the limitations of the simulated temperature results.
3. It is recommended to provide additional explanation for why 5 mm and 7 mm were selected as the fixed cutting depths.
4. At a cutting depth of 2 mm, the peak temperature is lower than that at 1 mm, which the manuscript attributes to heat removal by the chips leading to a temperature decrease. This mechanistic explanation requires further supporting evidence. It is recommended to cite relevant references on "heat carried away by chips" in polymer cutting to support this mechanism, so as to avoid inferring the mechanism solely from simulation phenomena.
5. The manuscript only states that interactions are not considered in order to save computational cost. It is recommended to supplement this with literature evidence to justify the reasonableness of neglecting interaction terms in single-factor analysis in PE cutting research.
6. The simulation results of chip morphology are only qualitatively compared with the literature, lacking quantitative indicators. At present, the comparison is limited to visual aspects such as chip curling and fragment morphology, without introducing quantitative evaluation indicators such as chip curl radius and chip thickness. It is recommended to add quantitative statistics of chip characteristics to strengthen the argumentation of the chip morphology simulation results.
7. In the discussion of the results, the "competitive mechanism between thermal softening and strain-rate strengthening" could be further deepened. The article proposes that when the cutting speed increases, the competition between thermal softening and strain-rate strengthening determines whether the cutting force first decreases and then increases. However, there is currently no quantitative evaluation of the respective contributions of these two effects. It is recommended to point out this limitation in the discussion section.
8. The logical coherence of the presentation requires further enhancement.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. English writing requires thorough polishing. Issues include inconsistent tenses, improper article usage, singular/plural confusion of terms like "stress" and "strain", and multiple typos/formatting errors in table headers and figure captions, which impair readability.
2. Model validation adopts HDPE experimental data from references, but the research object is non-crosslinked PE. Please clarify the property difference between the two materials and discuss its impact on the simulation-experiment deviation.
3. In Section 2.2, the source and calibration basis of the progressive damage model parameters (Table 1) are not clearly stated. Please supplement the data source or fitting procedure of these parameters with corresponding descriptions or references.
4. The description of chip formation mechanism is repeated in Section 4 (model validation) and Section 5 (result analysis). Please streamline relevant content to avoid redundancy.
5. The simulation results of cutting force and temperature are not compared with other published studies on PE cutting. Please add cross-literature comparison to further support the findings of this work.
6. In Section 5, the selection basis of cutting parameter ranges (speed: 100–1000 mm/s; depth: 1–7 mm) is not provided. Please justify the parameter ranges combined with practical machining scenarios of PE components.
7. Figure captions are too vague. Please rename them to clearly indicate the content and working conditions; meanwhile, carefully check the order of the Table.
8. The abnormal temperature fluctuation between 1 mm and 2 mm cutting depth only has qualitative explanation. Please supplement quantitative analysis on chip heat-carrying effect and heat transfer efficiency.
9. If possible, please supplement more groups of validation tests under different working conditions to further improve the reliability and universality of the simulation model.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Interesting simulation study that presents a comparative analysis with experimental machining tests on polyethylene. The article is well organized, with a clear step-by-step structure, making it easy to follow and understand.

Page 3, Section 2.1, second paragraph: part of the text appears to be missing before Reference [18].

Page 4, Table 1: The terms d₁, d₂, …, d₅ should be written in uppercase letters to be consistent with Equation (2).

Author Response

We sincerely thank the reviewer for the positive evaluation of our manuscript and for the helpful comments.

1.Thank you for pointing this out. The missing word before Reference [18] was “temperature.” The sentence has been corrected accordingly in Section 2.1.

2.Thank you for this careful comment. The symbols in Table 1 have been revised ensure consistency with Equation (2).

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This article has been revised detailedly according to the reviewers’ comments. And the revised portion basically correct. This article can be accepted and published.

Author Response

Thank you for your positive evaluation and recognition of our revisions. We sincerely appreciate your valuable comments and suggestions, which have helped us improve the quality of the manuscript.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

- The critical formula error in equation (1) must be corrected, the thermal softening term of the constitutive equation contains an apparent error.
- The font format and formula editing of the manuscript should be consistent in style and comply with the requirements of the journal.

After the above revisions are made, the manuscript will be suitable for publication in 'Journal of Manufacturing and Materials Processing'.

Author Response

Thank you for the suggestion. We have corrected the error in the thermal softening term of Equation (1) and carefully revised the font formatting and equation presentation throughout the manuscript to ensure consistency and compliance with the journal's requirements. We sincerely appreciate your valuable comments.