Analysis of Fault Conditions in the Production of Prestressed Concrete Sleepers

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I have reviewed the manuscript titled “Analysis of fault conditions in the production of prestressed reinforced concrete sleepers”. Authors have identified the root causes of defects affecting the quality of manufactured railways concrete sleepers. They used Ishikawa diagram and Pareto analysis. They have also suggested the corrective actions to improve the quality of manufactured sleepers.

The topic is interesting for the research community. The manuscript deserves to be published. However, there are some issues that should be taken care of before publication:

• The title could be modified to make it more specific by adding the methodology. Title may be modified as Analysis of fault conditions in the production of prestressed reinforced concrete sleepers through Ishikawa Diagram and Pareto Technique

• The references 1-12 are nor much relevant to the topic. Authors are encouraged to add references related to quality improvement in civil engineering area such as manufacturing of concrete elements, production of precast elements and construction of concrete structures employing various quality improvement techniques.

• The authors are advised to add process map of production of prestressed reinforced concrete sleepers in addition to manufacturing process description in section 2. The figure of casted sleepers at different process stages could also added to increase the readability.

• The authors have mentioned five ribs for Ishikawa diagram, Figure 1 (Measurement, Materials, Methods, Environment, Manpower, Machine). However, actual diagram shows the six ribs. Please review and improve the Ishikawa diagram specially the Measurement and Appraiser ribs. They are same and could be merged.

• The submitted manuscript needs language editing as the manuscript has many incomplete word or split words and errors.

Author Response

Thank you for all the recommendations and comments. All changes are marked by yellow color in the text.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

•    The article title seems to be for a simple report, improve it
•    Exaggerated introduction section. It is without a clear orientation, a big part of it is a description of the working method 
•    A literature review for this subject is required to show the research gap
•    The method section is more descriptive. The method is not clear 
•    The discussion seems to be a part of the analysis and the conclusion is poor 

Author Response

Thank you for all the recommendations and comments. All changes are marked by yellow color in the text.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The reviewed paper concerns quality control of the production process of prestressed concrete sleepers. The solution of practical problem (a case study) is presented. Many sleepers did not meet the standards' requirements due to premature fracture of bolts. The analyses performed by the authors allow them to decrease amount of non-conforming products. 

In general, I enjoyed reading the paper. I think that is suits the scope of Applied Sciences very well, since it shows the application of scientific methods to solve the existing engineering problem. 

I have a few suggestions, which could gain a more attention on the paper and make its more attractive to potential readers. Therefore, I propose a minor revision. 

• I think that from the title, word "reinforced" should be removed, since according to civil engineering nomenclature, there are "reinforced structures" or "prestressed structures", but not "reinforced prestressed structures". If the structure contains prestressing strands and conventional reinforcement, it is classified as prestressed structure. 
• I missed comments on the harmonised standard for the product and European system for construction products performance assessment. I think there should be some reference to the REGULATION (EU) No 305/2011 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 9 March 2011 (also known as the Construction Product Regulation, shortcut CPR). It is important regarding to topic of the manuscript, since the harmonised standards regulate not only requirements for the construction products, but they specify the requirement for the Factory Production Control also. Members of Working Groups in CEN, who work on specific problems related to construction products, very often follow current literature related to their scope. Reference to the CPR would make the reviewed paper attractive also for them. Maybe they should incorporate new assessment methods for bolts into the standard?
• Generally speaking, there are very few figures in the paper. Maybe some schemes and pictures of described products or processes would make the paper more attractive for readers? 
• Line 19 - The same component is later called "bolt" instead of "screw". I think the former is a better one. 
• Line 106 - The description of the concrete function is quite childish. The concrete should have enough compressive and tensile strength in order to carry loads. 
• Line 132 - There is "concrete mix", not "concrete mixture".
• Line 240 - I do not understand this problem. In my opinion, too long compaction of concrete mix with vibrations, could be a problem due to the segregation of concrete mix components, which causes strong inhomogeneity of hardened concrete.  

Author Response

Thank you for all the recommendations and comments. All changes are marked by yellow color in the text.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

The paper deals with the fault conditions in the production of prestressed reinforced concrete sleepers. It presents a novel method to identify root cause of defects emerging in the production process of prestressed railway concrete sleepers.

This paper builds on the established expertise and reputation of the authors. It will be interesting to the readers of the journal.

Although the chemical analysis and measuring of hardness and microhardness of screws were realized.

This paper is so nice. I suggest publication as it is.

Author Response

Thank you for all the recommendations and comments. All changes are marked by yellow color in the text.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 5 Report

It would support readability if all references occur in the introduction part or a separated literature part. The method section contains a lot of refs to norms - this can be easily improved by listing the norms before and only announce something like "meets the requirements of the corresponding norm".

 

Author Response

Thank you for all the recommendations and comments. All changes are marked by yellow color in the text.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I have reviewed the resubmitted manuscript titled “Analysis of fault conditions in the production of prestressed concrete sleepers”. It is found that authors have improved the MS by incorporated the comments and the manuscript may be accepted for the publication.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, thank you very much for the constructive comments you provided.

Yours sincerely

Marek Šolc

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Please make a descriptive text between table 1 and figure 3

The title of figure 3 needs to be reformed

Author Response

Dear reviewer, thank you very much for the constructive comments you provided.

Yours sincerely

Marek Šolc

Author Response File: Author Response.docx