Improving Quality Control Methods to Test Strengthening Technologies: A Multilevel Model of Acoustic Pulse Flow

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript “Improving quality control methods to test strengthening technologies: a multilevel model of acoustic pulse flow”, by Egor Grigorev and Viktor Nosov, highlights the possibility to substantiate quality control criteria and ways to improve strengthening technologies.

    The manuscript can be considered for publication, after Major revisions. My comments are below.

1. Please insert a section where you should add the descriptions of the used equipment: generators (company name, used power range in your experiment), software used for data manipulation (company name, license, etc.), used materials for samples (name of the supplier, purity, etc.), and so on.
2. General remark: the authors should verify to be the same font size of the text, and the font size of the equations.
3. Equation 3: the omega sum, from second right parenthesis, is it derived? The sigh seems to be “comma”, not the derivative sign.
4. Equation 5: again, the exp is it derived? The sigh seems to be “comma”, not the derivative sign.
5. Line 170: Please correct the word “st3ps”.
6. Figure 3: Please increase de resolution of the exposed graphs; the colors and the text are not clear.
7. Figure 5: the values on the axes are not visible; please increase the quality of the graphs.

Author Response

Please insert a section where you should add the descriptions of the used equipment: generators (company name, used power range in your experiment), software used for data manipulation (company name, license, etc.), used materials for samples (name of the supplier, purity, etc.), and so on.

The information was added from 184 to 191 lines.

General remark: the authors should verify to be the same font size of the text, and the font size of the equations.

Corrected.

Equation 3: the omega sum, from second right parenthesis, is it derived? The sigh seems to be “comma”, not the derivative sign.

Corrected.

Equation 5: again, the exp is it derived? The sigh seems to be “comma”, not the derivative sign.

Corrected.

Line 170: Please correct the word “st3ps”.

ST3PS is the name of the steel in Russian. The closest analogue used in the EU is shown In parentheses.

Figure 3: Please increase de resolution of the exposed graphs; the colors and the text are not clear.

Corrected.

Figure 5: the values on the axes are not visible; please increase the quality of the graphs.

Corrected.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The Manuscript submitted to Applied Science, entitled "Improving quality control methods to test strengthening technologies: a multilevel model of acoustic pulse flow" is scientific work containing evaluation of the strengthening techniques by means of acoustic emission. 

The Article is well organised and is suitable for a journal, however it benefits from the revision. The main concerns of the reviewer are connected with the presentation of the scientific work and the methodology, e.g.:

• the quality of the figures almost all of them are quite low (not only the dpi but the organisation of the message in them is very poor)
• fig 1 - is quite messy and hard to understand without reading the paper what in addition is not that clearly explained. There is to much information mixed together that it makes hardly understandable.
• fig 2 - the scheme of the investigation stand would be beneficial for the understanding how the experiment was conducted
• fig 3 - quality is weak it is probably the pdf fault but before publishing the hq pictures should be uploaded.
• fig 6 -some lines are hardly visible therefore the reviewer recommends to make them thicker.
• tables - the Authors should remember about using the same number of significant digits in the same parameters
• Conclusions section - it benefits from presenting quantitative and qualitative summery of the study. 

Overall Merit of the Manuscript is good, however the Authors should follow this recommendations before publishing.

Author Response

the quality of the figures almost all of them are quite low (not only the dpi but the organisation of the message in them is very poor)

Corrected.

fig 1 - is quite messy and hard to understand without reading the paper what in addition is not that clearly explained. There is to much information mixed together that it makes hardly understandable.

Corrected.

fig 2 - the scheme of the investigation stand would be beneficial for the understanding how the experiment was conducted

The scheme was added.

fig 3 - quality is weak it is probably the pdf fault but before publishing the hq pictures should be uploaded.

Corrected.

fig 6 -some lines are hardly visible therefore the reviewer recommends to make them thicker.

Corrected.

tables - the Authors should remember about using the same number of significant digits in the same parameters

Corrected.

Conclusions section - it benefits from presenting quantitative and qualitative summery of the study. 

An item with a quantitative description was added.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors responded to all reviewer's suggestions/ comments, and it were made improvements on paper's quality. The manuscript can be accepted in the current form.

Reviewer 2 Report

I accept the revised version.