Improvement of Mechanical Properties and Microstructure of Cementitious Materials in a Hot-Dry Environment
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Manuscript ID: crystals-1781633
Title: Improvement of mechanical properties and microstructure of cementitious materials in a hot-dry environment
To the Authors.
Generally, the title corresponds to the content of the paper, but the scientific value of the paper does not add anything new and is not interesting.
The introductory part of the paper is misleading because it refers to the construction of high geothermal tunnels, pointing to the problem of hot and dry environment, which may occur in the construction elements of this type of engineering structures. Such an environment certainly affects the hydration process of cement composites, which is an obvious problem and widely described in the professional literature. Nevertheless, it is too predictable to try to explain the problem based on two ambient temperatures during maturation - 20°C and 60°C. In addition, the formation of test samples from cement mortar with a different amount of fly ashes, and from cement slurries with their participation, does not reflect the scale of the material and construction solutions in tunnel facilities. During the heating of the samples at the temperature of 60°C, the use of foil protection against water evaporation for the period of 0, 1, 2 and 3 days gave the expected results. The determined mechanical strength after 3, 7 and 28 days turned out to be the highest when the curing under the foil layer was the longest and the amount of fly ash was 25% in relation to the cement weight, which is not surprising.
The added value of the paper is certainly the chemical and microstructural analyzes of SEM, XRD and TG-DTG tests. However, their effect is also predictable and in line with existing literature.
The places for improvement have been marked in the text of the paper - see the attached file of the paper.
Bearing in mind the above, I propose to re-analyze the problem and perform the experiment of higher scientific quality.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Please see attachement
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The topic of the paper is interesting and the paper is very well structured. The novelty of the paper is well stated and the question that authors tried to address in their research has been fully addressed. However, the following are required to be considered by the authors before the paper being accepted.
· The current conclusions are massive, and it contains lots of unnecessary information. Therefore, authors are firstly required to state the main aim of the current research at the conclusion before listing the main findings. Then the findings should be summarised in and shortened as they are seems to be too much information there.
Author Response
Thanks for your comment. Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
To the Authors
Thanks for making changes. The paper is of better quality. However, there are still problems with spaces in the text - formatting
