Effects of Cement–Mineral Filler on Asphalt Mixture Performance under Different Aging Procedures
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Thank you for a very interesting article about the effect of cement on moisture resistance, and the overall performance. I am impressed with the wide range of tests applied to the mixtures in order to evaluate it. Especially, the low temperature resistance is often omitted in literature, and your work is thus quite comprehensive.
Overall I agree with your conclusions, and it is interesting to see the results. However, the conclusion or suggestion is perhaps too much of a generalization based on this study. Your work underlines the importance of testing the mixture (I agree with that), and then the last paragraph before conclusion is providing quite a generalization based on your findings. The 50% substitution may be in fact working for this type of AC-20 and the particular ratio between aggregate, bitumen and filler. I would be weary to state that this ratio of Portland cement in the filler will work for all of the asphalts. I think I suggest you stay with reporting the findings for this mixture, and suggest evaluation of this OPC content on a case by case basis. It is already somewhat mentioned in conclusions, but perhaps in there it is just a loose thought.
I have also not seen any chemical evaluation of the limestone filler. What I have seen in the past of that material was in white or yellowish tint powder, thus a grey powder is a bit suspicious. I would suggest some form of chemical analysis of the material and reporting it - XRD, hydrochloric acid solubility for content of CaCO3, infrared, etc. Something that would in fact assure that you are working with limestone an what class of limestone this is (is it blended with something, like fly ash? what is the carbonate content?). I suggest this for the purpose of repeatability and a suspicion of this being a different material.
Also some specific remarks for the text:
Line 69-70 the 2000-10000 .i am not sure what is the purpose of those numbers and what do they refer to?
Table 2 Adhesion with SBS. I am not sure to what type of test it is refering to. I think it must be more self-explanatory for general audience without access to your specifications.
Table 5 - Typos: Powder, not power.
Line 129. Would it be better to be referring to bitumen/aggregate ratio, rather than asphalt aggregate ratio? And this is generally speaking a comment for the article. In some places (e.g. Table 1) there is modified bitumen, but the section in which it is is modified asphalt. Please, be more e consistant.
Line 200 - Limestone compared to cement? both of them do not have higher density.
Line 250 - The sentence could be more clear.
Line 295 - Not finished sentence?
Overall, thank you for a good paper and good luck.
Author Response
Please refer to the response letter.
Thank you very much for your patient review.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
This paper shows the effect of cement filler on asphalt mixture. Currently, cement was used for asphalt mixture filler.
But, your research is shown aging effect. It will be good reference in the future.
Author Response
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Thank you very much.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
