Sugar as an Analogue for Snow in Penetration Testing: A Preliminary Comparison

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article presents an interesting study comparing sugar sintering and bonding characteristics in relation to penetration resistance to snow processes and properties, and makes the case that sugar can possibly be used to understand sintering and bonding processes in snow. The manuscript is well-written and the methodology is clear. I only have a few minor revisions to suggest, as follows.

Line 34: scalend should be scale and

Line 40: umb-bellhaped dumb bell shaped

Line 52: elf-organised criticality

Line 86: ncompetent phasesessentially, extra parenthesis

Line 101: think hains should be grains

Figure 1a, font is small

Figure 4, would be helpful to point out that the magnitude of the vertical axis is different in the various plot. The legends are also small, and hard to see what colors correspond to what time frame…If there could maybe be one larger legend, or if the dots in the legend could be larger, that would also be helpful.

Figures 5, 6, 7, think it is also useful to point out in the captions for these 3 figures that the vertical axis is different for the 3 figures.

Author Response

Dear Sir/Ma'am

Thank you for your helpful comments; we very much appreciate the time that you have taken to review our draft manuscript.

We have addressed each comment below:

1. Line 34: thank you, we have amended this.
2. Line 40: thank you, we have amended this.
3. Line 52: thank you, we have amended this.
4. Line 86: thank you; apologies; we have amended this.
5. Figure 1a: thank you, we have increased font size. 
6. Figure 4: thank you; for clarity, we have described the colours in the figure caption and we have pointed out in the caption that the vertical axes are different.
7. Figures 5, 6 & 7: thank you, we have pointed out in the caption that the vertical axes are different.

Thank you again for your comments and advice.

Sincerely

Adrian.

Reviewer 2 Report

See attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Sir/Ma'am

Thank you for your helpful comments; we very much appreciate the time that you have taken to review our draft manuscript.

We have addressed each comment below:

1. Title etc.: thank you, we have made this amendment.
2. Line 133: thank you; we have amended.
3. Table 1: thank you; apologies; we have made this amendment.
4. Line 141: thank you; we have modified the wording for clarification.
5. Line 155: thank you for this query. We calculated strain (%) by dividing penetrometer stroke (mm) by maximum possible penetration (20 mm).
6. Figure 3: thank you; we have modified the timescale.
7. Line 188: thank you for this query. We chose strength because it is a term routinely used in the snow mechanics literature to describe the stress at failure for snow of various densities etc. It enables our results to more easily be compared with snow data from Abele, Mellor etc.; thank you.
8. Line 190: thank you; we have changed this term to improve clarity.
9. Figure 4: thank you; we have removed the extra parentheses and I have clarified the colour/day relationship in the figure caption; thank you.
10. Figure 4 (#2): thank you; earlier, we have described our calculation of strain.
11. Figures 5, 6 & 7: thank you; apologies; we have amended these labels.
12. Figures 8, 9 & 10: thank you; we have worked to improve the contrast/resolution of these images.
13. Section 5.5: thank you; I have added a brief explanation to this section.

Thank you again for your comments and advice.

Sincerely

Adrian.