Establishing the Characteristic Compressive Strength Parallel to Fiber of Four Local Philippine Bamboo Species

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Although the work is very well structured, presents the research hypotheses, the limitations of the work, as well as the methodology seems adequate to me and the results presented seem adequate and can be supported by the methodology applied, I apologize, but I am not convinced of the novelty of the work, that is, there are other works in the literature that have made similar analyzes to those made by the authors, using the same species.

In addition, I would like to understand, please, why the number of samples used per species is so different.

Also, as stated by the authors, “This study will be significant in developing standards for bamboo as a construction material in the country. Aside from the aforementioned environmental benefits that bamboo has to offer, this research can be used as a guide for engineers, construction firms, and other researchers to support the use of green building materials and the use of bamboo as a structural material”, but I must say that the quantity of sample tested so that the results can be incorporated in standards or used for design seem to be small.

I would highlight, for example, work carried out by Professor Dr. Normando Perazzo Barbosa, with different species of bamboo, which can contribute positively to the studies and objectives of the authors.

Finally, although it's very well written and structured, I'm still not convinced that it's a novel study.

Perhaps the authors could elaborate further.

Author Response

1. The novelty of the study lies in the bamboo samples used, in which the study defines site-specific bamboo characteristics found and locally sourced in the Philippines. Literature with similar analyses might have used similar bamboo species but the resulting values might differ due to different site-specific conditions, in which the comparison of results were discussed in Section 3.7.
2. The number of samples were based on the availability of the bamboo samples but maintaining a minimum sample size of 30 per species to have a corresponding k_0.05,0.75 constant value used for calculating the characteristic strength. Section 2.4 is added to further discuss the calculations.

Reviewer 2 Report

Author Response

1. Line 178-181: Effect of moisture content is discussed.
2. Line 558-560: Additional recommendation on SEM Analysis for failure mechanisms.
3. Line 606-609: Additional references

Reviewer 3 Report

This study establishes the characteristic compressive strength of four bamboo species: Bambusa vulgaris, Dendrocalamus asper, Bambusa blumeana, and Guadua angustifolia Kunth. Authors did a lot of experiments, generalizations and summaries, including summary of the compressive strength parallel to the fibers of bamboo species, effect of geometric property and nodes to compressive strength, correlation models and comparison to lots of other Studies. Results of this study will be significant in developing standards for bamboo as a construction material in the Philippines. Aside from the aforementioned environmental benefits that bamboo has to offer, this research can be used as a guide for engineers, construction firms, and other researchers to support the use of green building materials and the use of bamboo as a structural material.

All the cited references are relevant to the research. And the research design, questions, hypotheses and methods are clearly stated. The research topic is very meaningful, and the results can also solve some practical problems. So I think this article is constructive.

One point is that this article is just a summary and does not conduct in-depth analysis and research. It would be more meaningful if you could deeply explore the failure mechanism, find a way to improve the mechanical properties, or provide some references for the cultivation of high-performance bamboo.

Others:

Please improve the clarity of the image: Figure 1.

Abbreviations should be explained at the first occurrence: Figure 4 DA-N.

Author Response

1. Line 154-156: Clarity of image (Figure 1) was improved.
2. Line 183-185: Discussion of Figure 4. DA-N and DA-WN abbreviations.
3. Line 558-560: Additional recommendation on SEM Analysis for failure mechanisms.

Reviewer 4 Report

The manuscript is good, please address this minor comments.

line 124: As far as I know, “specie” means “coins”, what you’d need here is “species”, that is both the singular and plural form of the word.

line 125-125: Is this a standard specification, if so, reference the standard, otherwise, specify why you chose these measures.

line 133: “their species”.

line 138: I don’t understand this, sorry: are you measuring the hight of the specimens? What does “180° apart” mean? If I rotate a caliper of 180°, I should obtain the same length. What am I missing?

line 139-140: same as above, I guess. It is not clear, to me, what 180° apart means.

line 147: delete the space between 0.01 and g and all the spaces within the text between value and UoM.

line 158: delete the dash between 2000 and kN.

line 162: “their axes were aligned”.

line 162-163: Please delete this sentence.

line 165: Please use “300s±120s”. Same principle at line 186.

line 211: “content, respectively.”.

line 216: “density, respectively.”.

line 218: “Nurmadina et al. [14]”.

line 250: “were recorded”.

line 265: “Li et al.”.

line 284: If this is to say many D. asper specimens experienced splitting, please write “A plurality”.

line 307: If I interpret this correctly, please rephrase as “The general trends of failure modes occurring for each species are: in B. vulgaris, the presence of nodes has an effect towards the occurrence of crushing;”.

line 330: “that culms with holes, regardless of the species and nodal condition, are more likely”.

line 346-350: Please rephrase as “According to ISO 12122-1 (2014) [18], the computed characteristic compressive strength for the species in this study are based on the 5th percentile value with 75% confidence and is summarized in Table 5.”.

line 352: “Kunth; B. vulgaris”.

line 353-356: Delete the sentence.

line 366: Please rephrase as “relationships of B. vulgaris and B. blumeana highlight statistically significant differences”.

line 377: Here you put symbols in brackets, earlier in the paper (for instance, lines 140, 142, or 147) you put symbols in commas. Please be consistent. It is perfectly legit to not use anything at all (“The length L, diameter D, wall thickness δ, area A, mass per unit length q,…”), as it is understood that those are the symbols signifying the entity. However, if you want to use separators, I suggest you use brackets throughout, which is preferable. Please also be consistent in the use of italic or normal font for symbols, as you use a mix of them here and there.

line 386: “having both moderate”.

line 401: “is comparable to the results”.

line 422-423: I don’t understand this sentence, I think it needs rewording/rephrasing.

line 446 and 454: “lower”, not “lesser”.

line 452: “are close to the results”.

line 469: “Bahtiar et al. [15]”.

Already covered in the comments.

Author Response

1. Line 124-125: PNS ISO 22157:2020 reference is specified.
2. Line 124,134: “species”
3. Line 138-144: Detailed explanation on measuring sample dimensions.
4. Line 164: “their axes were aligned”
5. Line 234,239: “, respectively”
6. Line 241: “Nurmadina et al.”
7. Line 264: “were recorded”
8. Line 282: “Li et al.”
9. Line 301: “A plurality”
10. Line 324-328: Rephrasing
11. Line 342-344: Rephrasing
12. Line 358-360: Rephrasing
13. Line 362: “Kunth; B. vulgaris”
14. Line 376: Rephrasing
15. Line 396-397: “having both moderate levels”
16. Line 411: “is comparable to the results”
17. Line 430-431: Rephrasing
18. Line 454,461: “lower”
19. Line 460: “are close to the results”
20. Line 476-477: “Bahtiar et al.”
21. Line 126,127,145,149,152,160,166-167,169-170,193-195,216-220,223,232,249-251,371,378,386-395,401,414-419,435-436,525: Consistency in displaying symbols and unit of measurements.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors, 

Thank you for clarifying my points and congrats for the great work.