Evaluation of the Durability of Bridge Tension Cables Based on Combination Weighting Method-Unascertained Measure Theory

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The writing of the paper needs a lot of improvement in terms of grammar, spelling, and presentations. The paper needs careful English polishing since there are many typos and poorly written sentences.
Some examples are as the following:
* Check the usage of the commas carefully.
* Check the articles including "a", "an" and "the".
* Check the required and unneeded blank spaces.

The literature review is brief; kindly review some recent research in the area (2021 and 2022). Authors could also provide a general overview of the topic.

Avoid repetitions. I can see several repetitions at different places in this paper. Thorough proofreading is required.

No managerial and theoretical implications of the findings are narrated in the paper.

No future works in Conclusion. After adding future works, please change the title to Conclusion and future works

Ensure that all the keywords are used in title and abstract of the paper.

The paper is required to be improved in terms of the usage of the English language. Further, the paper is required to be proof-read thoroughly by a native English speaker. Several sentence construction issues are noticed in this paper.  

Follow the referencing style stated in the authors' guidelines of the journal.

 

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper introduced a comprehensive evaluation of the durability of bridge tension cables based on the combination weighting method-unascertained measure theory. The author has done a lot of work. A combined method was used, and an example was estimated. Unfortunately, the paper shows substantial deficits whereas publication cannot be recommended in the present form.

Several weaknesses of the paper:
1. Keywords: The keywords are not present in the Abstract.

2. There are some abbreviations without explanation.

3. Introduction: The background introduction needs a lot of literature, so it is not enough in this section.

4. There are many long sentences: Lines 63-66, Lines 522-525, Lines 612-616.

5. The description of references should be improved. Lines 67, 71, 77, 85

6. Some points should be improved,“Betti[3]”. “Class I and Level II”

7. Table 2: how the classification criteria are determined.

8. Line 175, “as?1”.

9. Lines 214, 220, 237: the difference between “Where” and “where”.

10. Lines 237-242: there is no “.” for the sentences.

11. 3.1.3: this section is the description, so I think that this tense is not suitable.

12. Line 282: “as shown in Table 3. reduces the ambiguity of the importance 282

judgment of evaluation indexes”.

13. Lines 331-333: “,and”, “? ,where”, “.And”.

14. Figure 2: the description is not suitable.

15. Line 282: “12.0 m” and “3000.00m”.

16. Line 408: k1(x4)=-0.06/0.2=0.3? The result is an error, so why the subsequent calculation is correct.

17. Line 416: the matrix is not correct.

18. Line 484: the matrix is written so careless.

19. Lines 416, 543, 546 : “,the”, “)as” “,then”.

20. Line 593: “···to its correlation function. the value···”.

21. Line 603: “Table 12 and Table 13 shows the comparison table of weight results and the comparison table of evaluation results, respectively.”.

22. Line 618: “But still need to carry out the necessary inspection, maintenance and reinforcement, to prevent further corrosion due to the sling breaking accident.”.

23. References. The format is inconsistent, so authors should check carefully.

24. there is no introduction about the IAHP and CRITIC.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

· First of all, please insert a proper and explicit state of the art. Please make sure that you demonstrate the affirmation from the abstract, that this is a complete novelty.

· The results discussion is poor and no comparison or added value was noticed.

· The structure of this paper needs to be improved.

· Insufficient summary and analysis of research issues in the Introduction.

· The English language expression of this paper needs to be professionally revised.

 

· Please edit the paper carefully such that to respect the instructions for authors. A homogeneous style is desired.

· You should present the contributions with respect to your past papers that should be cited. Your past algorithms are very well appreciated.

· References that do not belong to the main stream publications should be deleted.

· I am not sure if the comparison is correct because all algorithms and classifiers used in the comparison including yours depend on parameters. Other parameters lead to other results

· In the conclusions section, an explanation can be made about the reasons why the results obtained as a result of the study are not 100% accurate. Namely; Is this due to a lack of filtering?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

The reviewer thanks the authors for the work done. The method proposed for cable-stayed bridges could be promising for improving further structural health monitoring systems. Nevertheless, I do not recommend the publication of the manuscript in the “Sustainability, MDPI” unless following major modifications are taken into account within the article:

1)  The current state of knowledge relating to the manuscript topic is not covered and clearly presented, and the authors’ contribution and novelty are not emphasized. In this regard, the authors should make their effort to address these issues, by adding additional comments on the state of the art and the proposed aspects.

2)  Introduction. In a cable-arch bridge or in a cable-stayed bridge, the tension estimation in cables and/or hangers has been developed using dynamic and static nondestructive methods. With this regards, please, refer to these issues and cite the following references:

-   A novel tension estimation approach for elastic cables by elimination of complex boundary condition effects employing mode shape functions. Eng. Struct. 166 (2018) 152–166.

-   Bending tests for the structural safety assessment of space truss members. Int. J. Space Struct. 33 (3–4) (2018) 138–149.

-   Tension determination for suspenders of arch bridge based on multiple vibration measurements concentrated at one end. Measurement 123 (2018) 254–269.

3)  The paper could be improved by inserting a table where the literature is discussed to briefly characterize each reference (e.g. authors, year, lab experiments, topic, and findings). This could help to give more strength and significance to the state-of-the-art article. And, moreover, by introducing original figures with schemes to explain the driving ideas traced by the literature review.

4)  Objectives and findings should be presented more clearly (e.g., using the following division of the Sections: Introduction, Review of Existing Methods, Proposed Method, Application in a Cable-Stayed Bridge, Comparison between Existing and Proposed Method, Discussion, Conclusions). The current main sections appear not very well organized and divided. And, moreover, the steps of the proposed method (how it works in the field) are not presented clearly. Please, review the corresponding parts.

5)  Section 4. The geometric and mechanical characteristics of the Jiahui Bridge have not clearly illustrated. Please, provide more information and, moreover, introduce figures with schemes of the bridge.

6)  Section 4.1. Too many manipulations have been inserted. Please, try to summarize the calculations using sentences within the text.

7)  Additional comments should be added in regard to the practical value of this work, i.e., how the industry can profit from it.

8)  Compared with other monitoring techniques, the superiority of the proposed method was not clearly explained. Please, review the corresponding parts.

9)  Most tables and graphs lack the units of the parameters. Please, revise.

10)  The further work, related to this work, should be mentioned at the end of the article. The potential of the work is for bridge applications. Will additional simulations of the method be performed on different cable-stayed bridges ? Please, specify.

11)  I suggest to the authors to edit all the text of the paper with the help of a native English speaker who should be an expert in the domain of “Structural Engineering”. Punctuation, spelling, sentence structure, conciseness, readability and writing style can be improved.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Thanks for the careful revision. I think it can be published in its present form.

Reviewer 4 Report

The reviewer thanks the authors for the work done. The authors have adequately addressed my comments. I finally recommend the publication of the manuscript in the “Sustainability, MDPI”.