Replay to the Discussion by Ni et al. on “Analysis of the internal stability of granular soils using different methods”

The authors wish to thank the discussers for their interesting comments that allow us to further improve the paper under discussion. The method proposed by the authors (Moraci et al. 2014) summarizes the commonly used criteria to evaluate the internal stability of cohesionless sand–gravel soils (i.e., Kezdi 1969; Sherard 1979; Kenney and Lau 1985, 1986; hereafter referred to as Kezdi, Sherard, and Kenney and Lau, respectively). The results of the method proposed by the authors are obtained as the average of Sherard’s and Kenney and Lau’s methods. Therefore, the authors’ method is conservative for soils for which both methods used provide conservative results. Kezdi’s criterion has not been considered in the reply because it is similar to but more conservative than Sherard’s.