Reply to “Discussion of ‘A photogrammetry-based method to measure total and local volume changes of unsaturated soils during triaxial testing’ by Zhang et al. (DOI 10.1007/s11440-014-0346-8)” by Salazar and Coffman (DOI 10.1007/s11440-015-0380-1)

Abstract

The authors thank the discussers for their interest in our paper. Their compliment that our paper ‘‘is significant and provides an advancement of the state of the art on external photography-based measurements of triaxial specimens’’ is particularly appreciated. The authors, however, consider that much of the discussion is not quite accurate and contains bias that may transmit misleading messages to the readers. In the authors’ opinion, the discussers have two objectives in this discussion: one is to criticize the method proposed by Zhang et al. [8] and the other is to promote their own method [Salazar and Coffman (2014) Published in Geotechnical Testing Journal in January 2015, referred as Salazar and Coffman [7] in the following sections]. In this closure, we have responded to each of their criticisms and raised questions about their method as well.