Effect of Microscopic Properties on Flow Behavior of Industrial Cohesive Powder
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis paper presented a comparative study on effects of microscopic properties of an industrial cohesive powder on flow characteristics by different testers, which is interesting. The paper is well written. However, there are a few suggestions for improving the paper so it can be published in good quality.
1, the title is not clear and needs to be clarified.
2, keywords: please include a few more keywords.
3, Line 37: ‘scientific interest’ should be plural.
4, Line 42: ‘for e.g.:’ should be ‘for example’ or ‘e.g.’.
5, Line 52: ‘is still frequent’ should be ‘is still exist’.
6, Line 194: ‘average deviation’, is there any number for the deviation?
7, Line 205: ‘for the two reference powders’ Is that correct? It is believed that all tests only used one powder, ‘Powder A’ as indicated in the manuscript.
8, Line 215-216: ‘Based on the theory, the smaller particles with higher density are the strongest cohesive forces and acting most effectively on each other.’ is suggested that ‘In theory, smaller particles with higher density may have stronger cohesive forces on each other.’
9, Line 281: in the text, it mentioned that ‘against the major principal consolidation stress’, but in the figure it shows ‘shear stress’. Is that correct? Similarly, for figure 9?
10, In the figure 8, y-axis, KPa should be kPa.
11, Line 296: σ1 here should be defined or described.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageJust need to check errors and mistakes. Generally, English is good.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsManuscript is not well-organized and should be significantly improved before publishing.
Final 3 paragraphs of the introduction part are seems to be in some other places. I would say, phrase "A modified ring-shaped Schulze shear cell was used in this work to measure the flow properties of a powder at elevated temperatures." should be somewhere in "Materials and Methods" as well as "To understand the flow properties of a powder, a methodical study has been carried out by testing an industrial cohesive powder (Powder A with the mean particle diameter 2.02μm) in 2 shear testers (the Schulze Ring shear Tester and Anton Paar Powder Cell) at our partners location BASF SE, Germany. ". The last paragraph i would recommend to remove as it is not required.
It is a bit strange to place application area of Powder A in "Materials and Methods" part.
Some descriptions from part 3 Experimental Setup should be placed in "Introduction" and "Materials and Methods".
There are some misprints within the text. Authors are recommended to read all the text one more time.
Authors write, that data obtained with different methods are not the same, but are "within the fluctuation range". But figures 3-11 do not contain any "fluctuation ranges" or confidence intervals or dispersions or errors. I recommend authors to add those "fluctuation ranges" to the text as well as represent those data in provided plots.
Discussion part is not obvious. Authors do not compare obtained data with some published by other authors results. This should be corrected.
There is only one article published in last 5 years cited in the list of references. This should be corrected.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageThere are misprints
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsA very interesting article because the market uses various rheometers to determine the properties of powders. Congratulations to the authors. I hope that the next article will include information on the rheology of granulated powders. Granulated powders are most often used in industry.
Author Response
It's great to hear that you found the article interesting! Rheometers indeed play a crucial role in assessing powder properties across different sectors. Your suggestion regarding including information on the rheology of granulated powders in future articles is excellent idea. Since granulated powders are widely used in industry, exploring their rheological properties would provide valuable insights.
Reviewer 4 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe article by Manokaran M. et al. investigates powder flow on two powder shear rheometers at different normal stresses, temperatures, and times. The main aims of the authors are to compare the reproducibility of the data on the two rheometers and to study the variation of the bulk density of the powder when exposed to different conditions. In general, the article is well-written, provides valuable information.
Specific comments are as follows.
Title: “Effect of Microscopic Properties”. It is unclear what properties of the industrial cohesive powder are meant, which are affected by its microscopic properties. The title may be "Effect of Microscopic Properties on Flow Behavior of Industrial Cohesive Powder", i.e., there is no "on something".
Line 17: “the CALIPER collaborative project”. This abbreviation is not self-evident, and its meaning is provided only in the introduction. Are the authors sure it is needed in the abstract?
Line 93: “Powder A is light yellow in color and it is insoluble in water, soluble in alkali and slightly soluble in acid.” Could the authors provide the chemical composition of the powder? It will be helpful.
Line 100: “The initial bulk density”. It should be noted that this is the density of the original powder. Could the authors provide the density of the material of the powder? Not in the form of a powder but in the mass.
Lines 109 and 110: “HRS” and “CRS”. It is necessary to provide a deciphering of these abbreviations.
Line 111: “this Powder A exhibit a poor flow behavior”. For an uninformed reader, it would be helpful to provide a criterion for good/poor flow behavior in brackets.
Line 163: “the Mohr-Coulomb failure envelope theory.” A reference is needed.
Line 184: “We have chosen a pre-shear normal stress values between 3.9 and 19.6 kPa.” The authors did not write anywhere about the angular velocity of rotation of the bottom ring, although it should be specified for each experiment or once if it was always the same.
Line 215: “Based on the theory”. A reference to this theory is needed.
Line 282: “lies in the range of cohesivity”. For an uninformed reader, it would be useful to provide a clarifying criterion in brackets. In addition, Figure 9 should be discussed, and a definition for the Flow Function should be provided.
Line 360: "for DEM contact model". Abbreviations should be deciphered on their first use.
Lines 367-369. The singular pronoun is used here, whereas there are three authors. In addition, there is no section describing the authors' contributions.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageThe English language requires moderate editing.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsManuscript can be published
