Reinforced Concrete Corbel Strengthened Using Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) Sheets

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript describes the repair work of a reinforced concrete corbel using CFRP sheets. Although the authors provided some backgrounds on this repair method and the repair projects, the authors failed to present a novel method or any technical data useful for the improvement of current available method. It is in doubt whether the readers will be interested in this manuscript since the method described here is a standardized method in the United States or other countries. Thus, the reviewer did not see its fit to be published in a technical journal like The Journal of Composite Science.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,    Our sincere apologies for taking your time and we are sad that in your opinion our article does not have the quality needed to be published in the Journal of Composites Science.    As the intervention was done in an emergency situation, we did not have time to perform numerical analysis in that time. In order to provide a safe solution, the Strut and Tie Model has been used to quantify the CFRP sheets.    Also, as we have only 10 days to include the numerical analysis in the corrected version, unfortunately it would not be possible to accomplish your request.   The main goal of this paper was to present a real situation of using of CFRP applied to a reinforced concrete corbel once the main available researches are usually focused on numerical/experimental situations. In our opinion the good theory is that one that is capable to survive in real situations and that was the main idea of the paper.   We hope you could read our article again with different eyes as it could be a useful paper to practical engineers in the special issue of Journal of Composites Science focused in CFRP and concrete structures.   Our best regards, Rafael Souza Full Professor State University of Maringá (Brazil)

Reviewer 2 Report

in line 45, missing of "and" between Souza et all [4] "and" Souza[5]

Interessing application topic of strengthening reinforced concrete corbels in Bresil

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,Thank you very much for your careful reading and a complete review of the paper has been done in order to follow your recommendations. We hope that with the updates the article can be accepted for publication in the special issue of the Journal of Composites Science.

Our best regards,

Rafael Souza

Full Professor

State University of Maringá (Brazil)

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper is a practical solution to cobel strengthening using CFRP sheets. It is of great interest to readers dealing with rehabilitation of concrete structures using FRP sheets.

There a few editorial corrections on lines 18(change 'as' to 'such as'),71 (change 'done' to 'carried out'),78 (omit 'a' before behaviour),116 (change 'put' to 'place'),119 ('kinds of structural damages' to 'kinds of structural damage'),126 (change 'beware' to 'be aware'), 204 (change 'has' to 'have') and 263 ( and the structure has been kept under monitoring). 

The repair procedure is written clearly for the reader. The conclusions are appropriate for the information presented.

It may be useful to add what type of monitoring is carried out over 3 years.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,Thank you very much for your careful reading and a complete review of the paper has been done in order to follow your recommendations. We hope that with the updates the article can be accepted for publication in the special issue of the Journal of Composites Science.

  Our best regards,

Rafael Souza

Full Professor

State University of Maringá (Brazil)