PONE-D-22-28363Shear rheological model of the anchorage rock mass under water‒rock couplingPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. yang,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please, address all the comments made by the reviewers.

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Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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"Author Contributions: Conceptualization, Z.Z.L and D.W.; methodology, Y.J.J.; software, Z.M.; validation, L.Z.W.; formal analysis, Z.Z.L and D.W.; investigation, Y.J.J.; resources, Y.J.J.; data curation, Y.J.J.; writing—original draft preparation, Z.Z.L; writing—review and editing, Z.Z.L; visualization, Z.Z.L; supervision, Z.Z.L; project administration, D.W.; funding acquisition, Z.Z.L. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding: This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, grant number 51774166; Cscec Technology R&D Project, grant number CSCEC-2020-Z-57."

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"Author Contributions: Conceptualization, Z.Z.L and D.W.; methodology, Y.J.J.; software, Z.M.; validation, L.Z.W.; formal analysis, Z.Z.L and D.W.; investigation, Y.J.J.; resources, Y.J.J.; data curation, Y.J.J.; writing—original draft preparation, Z.Z.L; writing—review and editing, Z.Z.L; visualization, Z.Z.L; supervision, Z.Z.L; project administration, D.W.; funding acquisition, Z.Z.L. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding: This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, grant number 51774166; Cscec Technology R&D Project, grant number CSCEC-2020-Z-57."

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: In this paper, to study the shear creep deformation law of the anchoring rock mass under different water content conditions, shear creep tests of the anchoring rock mass under different water contents were carried out and the influence of water content on rock rheological haracteristics is explored by analysing the related mechanical properties of the anchorage rock mass. Then, the coupling model of the anchorage rock mass can be obtained by connecting the nonlinear rheological element and the coupling model of the anchorage rock mass in series. The paper is interesting and well written. But it still has some issues to be explained by the author before meeting the publishing standard.

(1)Please further explain the applicability of the model?

(2)The innovation of this paper is suggested to improve and highlight.

(3)What’s the “WEBER distribution? is the “Weibull distribution?

(4)In Figure 5, the cuves of 0.08% and 0.13% are same, please check. And the analysis of this section is not clear.

(5)In section 6, What's the role of this literature? I don't find the relationship between the literature content and this content. So PLE specify how to obtain the data in Table 2 to ensure the credibility of the data.

(6)Please check the information correction of this literature.

Reviewer #2: Water is an important factor to determine the mechanical behaviors of rock in the field condition. To study the shear creep deformation law of the anchoring rock mass under different water content conditions. This manuscript presented a Shear rheological model of the anchorage rock mass under water‒rock coupling. This manuscript is interesting. However, after a careful review of the paper, lots of details need to be revised. Therefore, it is recommended to revise the paper to increase its readability. Here are some suggestions.

1. The main content in this manuscript contains the creep mechanical tests and the sheal rheological model. The title does not cover the creep mechanical tests described in this manuscript. Thus, it is recommended to modify the title to contain the whole contents.

2. The first paragraph in Introduction, a key sentence is lacked to describe the important of the study work in this manuscript.

3. The second sentence in the second paragraph in Introduction has no meaning, please delete it.

4. “Zhao Tongbin et al.” should be “Zhao et al.”

5. The last paragraph does not need to state the results obtained in this study, the results should be summarized in the Conclusion. It should just describe the work you would like to do.

6. In Figure 1, the size of the anchor is suggested to be labeled.

7. The scheme of the conventional mechanical tests to obtain the parameters in Table 1 should be describe in detail. Did the uniaxial compression tests and direct shear tests used in this study? For the direct shear tests, the different normal stresses should be given, in this case, the cohesion and internal friction angle can be obtained. As well as, the shear strength may be various for the different normal stresses.

8. A water absorption test should be given and the curve of the water content changed with time must be given to demonstrate the relationship of the average water content and time as presented in Section 2.1.

9. The compositions and functions of the test equipment is recommended to added in Section 2.2.

10. A section to describe the testing scheme should be given in Section 2 to state the detail parameters setting for the different shear creep tests.

11. Section 2.3 is recommended to move into Section 3, and the title of Section 3 is suggested to be “results and analysis”

12. The description of the creep characteristics presented in Section 2.3 is unseemly. The creep stages of the specimen should be discussed according to the stress and time, some of them have three stages (under high stress), but some of them just have two stages (under low stress).

13. In Section 3.1, a curve to describe the relationship of water content and long-term strength should be given.

14. The value of the long-term strength should be given in Section 3.1.

15. Some part in this manuscript described unclearly, for example, “The curve is approximately linear before the long-term strength”, which curve should be given; “When the shear stress is greater than the long-term strength, the curve is approximately horizontal”, which curve is horizontal, but I cannot find a horizontal curve.

16. Can this shear rheological model describe the steady creep of the anchorage rock mass under water‒rock coupling? If it can, please demonstrate it.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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PONE-D-22-28363R1Creep mechanical tests and shear rheological model of the anchorage rock mass under water‒rock couplingPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. yang,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please, address all the points indicated by reviewer 2. Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 21 2023 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Antonio Riveiro Rodríguez, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: 1.Authors gave the results of uniaxial compression tests and direct shear tests as shown in the Response to the comments, but they are not found in the manuscript, please add them in the manuscript.

2.For the problem of 16 that I stated before: “Can this shear rheological model describe the steady creep of the anchorage rock mass under water‒rock coupling? If it can, please demonstrate it.” The response just shows a figure, and it has no a word to describe it. As well as, this content should be incorporated into the manuscript.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Qiangui Zhang

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[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Creep mechanical tests and shear rheological model of the anchorage rock mass under water‒rock coupling

PONE-D-22-28363R2

Dear Dr. yang,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Antonio Riveiro Rodríguez, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #2: Yes: Qiangui Zhang

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