Imaging Concrete Structures with Ultrasonic Shear Waves—Technology Development and Demonstration of Capabilities
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The invention of dry point contact transducers was made in the USSR, not in Russia. The USSR ceased to exist at the end of 1991. We need to make changes to the text.
We need to introduce a reflector detection criterion. Otherwise, in Fig. 9c, it is difficult to claim that all reinforcement bars are detected. Without defining the detection criterion, we can say that the glare of the rebar of the smallest diameter could not be detected. The diameters of the bars can also be specified.
In Fig. 13, the white color of the dotted arrows should better be replaced with red. Otherwise they are lost between the images.
After correcting insignificant comments, I recommend the article for publication without a second review.
Author Response
The authors would like to express their gratitude to the reviewer for the time and effort to review the manuscript. Please find below our responses to his/her comments:
The invention of dry point contact transducers was made in the USSR, not in Russia. The USSR ceased to exist at the end of 1991. We need to make changes to the text.
Thank you for this important note. We have changed the country from Russia to The USSR in the text
We need to introduce a reflector detection criterion. Otherwise, in Fig. 9c, it is difficult to claim that all reinforcement bars are detected. Without defining the detection criterion, we can say that the glare of the rebar of the smallest diameter could not be detected. The diameters of the bars can also be specified.
We have added the following text in page 12 to address the reviewer's concern: "Furthermore, it should be noted that the density of A-scan signals has an important effect on the obtained images. That is another reason why the rebar on the leftmost side of Figure 9c does not appear clearly as the others, in addition to the rebar size effect."
In Fig. 13, the white color of the dotted arrows should better be replaced with red. Otherwise they are lost between the images.
We have changed the color of the arrows.
After correcting insignificant comments, I recommend the article for publication without a second review.
Reviewer 2 Report
This paper mainly introduces the usage of ultrasonic shear wave devices (MIRA 3D) for defect imaging in the concrete structures. The technical content of this paper is adequate, however, there are some problems in its current form and some revisions that shall be made in order to upgrade the quality of this article. The paper requires minor revisions before publication.
Following are some of my comments and suggestions for this article:
1. Necessary citations should be added for the pictures.
2. Figures 2 and 3 can be combined and a table to compare the system performance (key parameters) is suggested.
3. Figure 12 has some label problems.
4. In section 5.1, what are the radius of the red dots? The author should give the reason why choose such radius.
5. In section 3, the author should briefly introduce the data processing algorithm (SAFT).
6. Limitations of shear wave inspection for the concrete structures should be concluded in the abstract.
Author Response
The authors would like to thank the reviewer for the time and effort reviewing the manuscript. Please find below our responses to his/her comments
1. Necessary citations should be added for the pictures.
We have reviewed to make sure that all the neccesary citatations were made for each photo if needed.
2. Figures 2 and 3 can be combined and a table to compare the system performance (key parameters) is suggested.
We have combined Figures 2 and 3 as suggested by the reviewer. However, since there are not many parameters to be compared for different versions of the device and we have described those in the text, we do not see the need of adding a separate table. We hope the reviewer would agree.
3. Figure 12 has some label problems.
The reviewer was correct. We have fixed the label issues.
4. In section 5.1, what are the radius of the red dots? The author should give the reason why choose such radius.
We suppose the red dots that the reivewer mentioned are the images of rebars. If so, they are generated automatically by the SAFT algorithm. In other words, we did not choose it.
5. In section 3, the author should briefly introduce the data processing algorithm (SAFT).
We have added section 5.1 to explain briefly the 3D-SAFT algorithm that we used to develop the visualization program in this research.
6. Limitations of shear wave inspection for the concrete structures should be concluded in the abstract.
We have added the following statement in the abstract "A main limitation of ultrasonic shear wave technique for concrete inspection is that it requires a significant amount of time and effort for data collection. "
