On the use of packing models for the prediction of fluvial sediment porosity

Rettinger, Christoph; Tabesh, Mina; Rüde, Ulrich; Vollmer, Stefan; Frings, Roy M.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-11-1097-2023

Articles | Volume 11, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-11-1097-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-11-1097-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 11, issue 6

Research article

|

02 Nov 2023

Research article |

| 02 Nov 2023

On the use of packing models for the prediction of fluvial sediment porosity

Christoph Rettinger, Mina Tabesh, Ulrich Rüde, Stefan Vollmer, and Roy M. Frings

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Final revised paper (published on 02 Nov 2023)
Preprint (discussion started on 23 Jan 2023)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

RC1:
'Comment on esurf-2022-72', Anonymous Referee #1, 19 Mar 2023

The manuscript shows comparative study between different models and evaluate them for application relevant to fluvial sediments. The existing models are modified incorporating cohesive packing of fines which improved the predictions. There are few typos and points that are worth discussion/clarification as highlighted in the attached file. Such points remain minor however, so I am recommending publication after minor revision.

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-2022-72-RC1
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Christoph Rettinger, 28 Jul 2023
  
  Please see the attached pdf for our response to your comments.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-2022-72-AC1
RC2:
'Comment on esurf-2022-72', Anonymous Referee #2, 09 Jun 2023

An interesting manuscript, though it needs some improvements, more than minor, but less than major. See detailed comments in the attached pdf.

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-2022-72-RC2
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Christoph Rettinger, 28 Jul 2023
  
  Please see the attached pdf for our response to your comments.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-2022-72-AC1

Peer review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision | EF: Editorial file upload

AR by Christoph Rettinger on behalf of the Authors (28 Jul 2023) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (22 Aug 2023) by Paola Passalacqua

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (26 Aug 2023)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (31 Aug 2023)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Dear Editor Prof. Paola Passalacqua,

Thank you for sending me the revised manuscript "On the use of packing models for the prediction of fluvial sediment porosity" by Rettinger et al. The authors replied diligently to the reviewer's comments and amended their manuscript where appropriate. As before, I consider the study interesting, factually correct, and worth publishing.

That being said, the quality of the text has decreased with the revision and leaves much to be desired, which makes me wonder if the authors accidentally uploaded an interim version: Words and parts of sentences are missing and the text flow is broken in many places. Beside that, the phrasing could be much clearer.

It's a pity that the effort and expertise that went into the study does not yet transcend to the quality of the text, but thankfully this can be fixed with some effort. I made suggestions to help along, but due to the sheer amount of issues, limited myself to the first 100 lines and the conclusions. A free grammar and style checker like Google Docs or Grammarly will probably be very useful.

The manuscript seems mature to me regarding its content, so I do not think that another round of peer-reviews is necessary once the text has been amended.

Kind regards,

Minor:

34 ff: "porosity predictors" ... "require only very limited information about the packing" I suggest carefully reformulating the sentence, as a porosity predictor having the packing as an input thus does not predict anything at all, c.f. eq. 1 and 2 showing the unique relation between porosity and packing density.
85 There seems to be a mistake in equation 3, it should be $e = Vp/Vs = (1-n)/n$

Textual:

0 It seems the authors wanted to replace particles by grains in the text but in the end deleted "particles", leading to awkward sentences in many places. I spotted a couple of them, but there are probably many more.

15 "thus" is awkward here, as is a conjunction referring to a previous sentences, but this is the first sentence of the text.
15 Unclear what "its" refers to, probably it refers to porosity, but porosity has not yet been mentioned in the main text at this point.
23 field studies or laboratory measurements -> field or laboratory measurements
The words study and measurement are inconsistently used here and in the follow up sentences. I suggest to use measurement throughout, and study only in places when referring to studies as such.
26 Using numerical simulations of the packing process -> Numerically simulating the packing process
29 direct of porosity : something is missing here
30 for a multitude of porosity assessments -> for assessing porosity on a larger scale
31 actual sediment grains -> sediment samples
33 have been developed as an -> can be
36 concise mathematical formula -> mathematical formula (Redundant, a formula is concise by definition.)
50 "meaning that fine fill the pores" sounds awkward and is unclear, a word seems missing here.
50 coarse , -> coarse,
50 fine , -> fine,
53 coarse for filling and fine for occupation -> coarse for filling and fine for occupying
54 porosity . -> porosity.
54 quartz sand -> sand
54 specific -> particular ???
55 Turning towards packings of fluvial sediment -> For fluvial sediment
55 covering silt, sand, and gravel -> spanning from silt, over sand, to gravel
56 which leads to a wide range of size ratios on the order of 10^4 -> spanning four orders of magnitude
57 observable -> naturally occurring
57 The observable grain sizes naturally cover the whole range of this size interval -> The naturally occurring grain size distributions cover the whole aforementioned range … (I would swap the two sentences to avoid the back-reference.)
58 used -> used for
59 their verification was often again restricted to a few different size classes -> they were verified only for a limited number of size classes, different to those found in rivers.
61 cohesive interactions -> cohesion
62 once small like fine sand and silt -> something seems missing here, "once small grains like fine sand and silt" ?
62 "which again influence the packing", remove as redundant
62 average grain shape -> grain shape
65 could demonstrate -> demonstrated
67 results -> porosity ?
68 porosity predictions -> predicting porosity ->
69 apparent gap -> gap
90 contains of -> contains grains of
---
419 "have three different porosity prediction models" -> something is missing here
420 wide range of size ratios and complex shapes -> wide range of grain sizes and shapes
421 the into distinct -> the grains into distinct
422 per class -> remove, as redundant
423 ratio -> ratios
425 packing simulations -> simulating the packing
430 , now featuring -> something is missing here
432 the accurate prediction capabilities of the LMPM and the CPM for this case were established. Reformulate as unclear: suggestion: "the LMPM and CPM predicted the porosity reasonably well"
433 "NPM revealed a systematic deficit" -> "NPM showed a systematic deficit"
436 we could demonstrate -> we demonstrated
437 for the simulation data -> for the simulated packings
439 input for -> make double space a single space
440 nor -> nor about
441 could obtain reasonable prediction results -> we could predict the porosity of mixtures reasonably well.
444 we the great potential : something is missing here
445 CPM, that ... become, -> CPM that ... become
450 can here help -> can help (Or move "here" at the end of the sentence.)

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (08 Sep 2023) by Paola Passalacqua

AR by Christoph Rettinger on behalf of the Authors (10 Sep 2023) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (24 Sep 2023) by Paola Passalacqua

ED: Publish as is (24 Sep 2023) by Andreas Lang (Editor)

AR by Christoph Rettinger on behalf of the Authors (24 Sep 2023)

Short summary

Packing models promise efficient and accurate porosity predictions of fluvial sediment deposits. In this study, three packing models were reviewed, calibrated, and validated. Only two of the models were able to handle the continuous and large grain size distributions typically encountered in rivers. We showed that an extension by a cohesion model is necessary and developed guidelines for successful predictions in different rivers.