Reply to discussion by Kaya et al. on "Swelling characteristics of bentonite in artificial seawater"

The authors are extremely grateful to Drs. Kaya, YukselenAksoy, and Oren for their valuable and constructive discussion. We are aware that their discussion is as follows: (1) It is known that calcium-type bentonite has lower swelling potential than sodium-type bentonite. However, the swelling-pressure test results shown in Fig. 6 in Komine et al. (2009) contradict this. (2) The authors of the discussion believe that the reported swelling pressures of bentonites are a coupled function of the water and montmorillonite content of bentonites. For their evidence, they show new figures by using the experimental data in Komine et al. (2009). Thus, from the presented data, it is difficult to reach the conclusion that the ‘‘influence of artificial seawater on the swelling characteristics of sodium-type and artificial sodium-type bentonites is low’’ and ‘‘the influence of artificial seawater on the swelling characteristics of calcium-type bentonites is more slight than sodium-type and artificial sodium-type bentonites.’’