Analysis of Movement Law and Influencing Factors of Hill-Drop Fertilizer Based on SPH Algorithm
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The study “Analysis of Movement Law and Influencing Factors of Hill-drop Fertilizer Based on SPH Algorithm” is overall well structured, clear and focus a very interesting and pertinent topic in the light of precision agriculture aiming costs reduction and operations efficiency
In my opinion, the manuscript could incorporate some minor changes.
Figure legends text should be more complete, they should stand as their own. A reader should be able to understand what the figures show by just reading its legend and in my opinion, this does not happen.
In the abstract, the authors state” A hill-drop fertilizer prototype was developed.” but they do not elaborate on that further in the text.
A suggestion is that some of the simulation results could in the results and discussion section, this might improve the interpretation and comparison with field results.
Please see the comments on the article PDF.
Best wishes
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.zip
Reviewer 2 Report
This manuscript describes a simulation method of soil (or fertilizer) disturbance after plowing (or similar action) with a farm machine (in here, hill-drop fertilizer). Since I am not so expert in this area, it is somewhat difficult to understand the actual purpose of this simulation. – Is it to design a simulation model using SPH?, is it to verify the SPH simulation method with actual experiment, or is it to measure the accuracy of SPH simulation?.
I have following inquiries
1 As my understanding on Figure 2, the fertilizer has already been in the soil, and the devices (opener) passes through between the two blocks of fertilizer. Then the disturbance of the two fertilizer blocks is simulated with SPH algorithm. It is right? -Then what is the purpose of the fertilizer device? Is it for plowing the soil already fertilized or for inject fertilizer into soil?
2. Since most of reader can not know well (maybe) about the operation of hill-drop fertilizer (or seeder?) Please clearly state what is the target of this manuscript with proper explanation of the machine – if the contents are highly related to the machine. Also line 111-119, it is hard to understand the X, Y, Z direction. Please provide a graphics.
3. Figure 5 should be precedent to figure 3 & 4.
4. What is 40, 48 and 24 hard numbers in eq (6), (7) and (8) – More explains may help to understand the simulation design.
5. Comparison (or evaluation on) the simulation results with actual measurement is omitted. This is the weakest point of this manuscript. – It makes me wonder about the main purpose (or contribution) of this paper. – to be added with contribution statement.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.zip
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
As I mentioned in the first review, I am not an expert in this agriculture machinery research areas. So, my review comments might be somewhat out bounded caused by my misunderstandings. However, the reason that I put several ‘overview’ type of comments is to suggest improving the readability of this manuscript for not-expert readers like me. Especially comments 1 ~ 4, as current state of manuscript, the commented points are not clearly understandable to me (at least) and I suggested improve (or revise) the statements on your manuscript for the reason. (I am not asking to persuade me with response). – Still, as my review opinion, the commented points are not clearly improved.
Also if the main target is the DESIGN simulation and VERIFY the effect in actual Field, as author’s response, “a simulation model is designed based on the SPH algorithm ….. The field experiment is to verify the correctness of the law and effect in the simulation result”, at least objective comparisons (or performance evaluations of simulation tools to the real world) should be included in the experiment section. The objective comparison means, comparison graph (or table) between simulated result and actual measurement with error rate etc. in various settings).
For equation (6)~(8), are the hard numbers the permanent constants? Means 24 points, 10cm and 4cm are never changing parameters all the simulation cases? Usually the variable numbers used in simulation defined as terminologies and they are given in experimental settings. Also the simulation results shown on Figure 3 and 4 are the permanent all the cases?
Much of detailed additional comment opinions is skipped. As a comment summary, what I asked in the first review is ‘major’ revision to improve readability significantly. But the state of current revised manuscript is a version of ‘minor’ revision. It might not be sufficiently revised enough to be published as the current state in my thought.
Author Response
Dear Editor and Reviewer:
Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Analysis of Movement Law and Influencing Factors of Hill-drop Fertilizer Based on SPH Algorithm” (Manuscript ID: applsci-690048). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the reviewer’s comments are as flowing:
- According to the comments of expert, this paper had made major revision especially in background introduction, method description, and result description to improve the readability of the paper. Revised portion are marked in yellow in the paper.
- In the result and discussion, section 3.3 was added to compare and analyze the simulation result and experiment result. Revised portion are marked in yellow in the paper.
- Equation 6–8 were revised in line 210-222, and some errors in the paper were also corrected, and some detail were added in the paper. Revised portion are marked in yellow in the paper.
We appreciate for editors and reviewers’ warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with approval.
Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 3
Reviewer 2 Report
* There might be some mistakes in equations.
eq (1) & (2) some correction might be necessary
As my understanding the subscription on x and y (what is y? no definition is shown) are not match - should be corrected. They should be as (or be similarly expressed since the form are convolution expression on 3-D if x is a 3-D vector)
Eq(1) ->
Large Pi(i=1 to n) f(x_i) = Int f(x_j)W(x_i-x_j) dx_j = Sigma(i=1 to n) <f(x_i)>
Eq(2) ->
<f(x_i)> = Sigma(j-1 to n) f(x_j)W(x_i-x_j)
Also the x term should be expressed in bold font if it is 3-D vector.
Author Response
Dear Editor and Reviewer:
Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Analysis of Movement Law and Influencing Factors of Hill-drop Fertilizer Based on SPH Algorithm” (Manuscript ID: applsci-690048). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked in yellow in the paper.
We appreciate for editors and reviewers’ warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with approval.
Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
