Insight into the Evolutionary Mechanism of the Rear Fissure of Landslides That Conform to the Three-Section Mechanism

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This manuscript reports the evolutionary mechanism of the rear fissure in a locked landslide that conforms to the three-section mechanism. The topic is of importance in the hazard mitigation of landslides, and the experiment is well conducted. However, some issues are not well explained in the current version. Before acceptance for publication, this manuscript needs to be revised in the following aspects:

1. About the 'Title'

Landslides that conform to the three-section mechanism are one of the categories of locked landslides according to the elaborations in the parts of “Discussion” and “Conclusions”. Hence, highlighting “landslides that conform to the three-section mechanism” in the title may be more rigorous. For example, insight into the evolutionary mechanism of the rear fissure in locked landslides that conform to the three-section mechanism, referring to the literature [5].

2. In the part of 'Introduction'

(1) More details about the loss of locked landslides should be added to illustrate the significance of the research, especially from the perspective of the sustainable development of the economy and society.

(2) The reason or advantage of 'base friction testing' over others should be explained in detail, which may need more references.

3. In the part of 'Base friction testing for landslide fissure extension'

(1) The base friction test needs to be introduced in more detail, including the model thickness, sampling interval of camera, and so on.

(2) As a noncontact measuring method, the working principles of the particle image velocimetry (PIV) are desired to be illustrated briefly.

(3) The field prototype slope corresponding to base friction testing is not the landslide case shown in the part of “Rear fissure in a locked landslide”, the Sale Hill landslide (105° 3510E, 35° 3340N). why?

4. In the part of 'Discussion'

As a scientific paper aiming at the evolutionary mechanism of landslides, why was the stability analysis discussed here? Is that necessary?

 

5. Figures in this paper are skillfully contrived enough, but some figures need more explanations, including:

(1) the units of the elevation values in Figure 1(a).

(2) the density of sampling points in Figure 3.

(3) the meaning of shear strains in Figure 6, etc.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

This manuscript reports the evolutionary mechanism of the rear fissure in a locked landslide that conforms to the three-section mechanism. The topic is of importance in the hazard mitigation of landslides, and the experiment is well conducted. However, some issues are not well explained in the current version. Before acceptance for publication, this manuscript needs to be revised in the following aspects:

1. About the 'Title'

Landslides that conform to the three-section mechanism are one of the categories of locked landslides according to the elaborations in the parts of “Discussion” and “Conclusions”. Hence, highlighting “landslides that conform to the three-section mechanism” in the title may be more rigorous. For example, insight into the evolutionary mechanism of the rear fissure in locked landslides that conform to the three-section mechanism, referring to the literature [5].

2. In the part of 'Introduction'

(1) More details about the loss of locked landslides should be added to illustrate the significance of the research, especially from the perspective of the sustainable development of the economy and society.

(2) The reason or advantage of 'base friction testing' over others should be explained in detail, which may need more references.

3. In the part of 'Base friction testing for landslide fissure extension'

(1) The base friction test needs to be introduced in more detail, including the model thickness, sampling interval of camera, and so on.

(2) As a noncontact measuring method, the working principles of the particle image velocimetry (PIV) are desired to be illustrated briefly.

(3) The field prototype slope corresponding to base friction testing is not the landslide case shown in the part of “Rear fissure in a locked landslide”, the Sale Hill landslide (105° 3510E, 35° 3340N). why?

4. In the part of 'Discussion'

As a scientific paper aiming at the evolutionary mechanism of landslides, why was the stability analysis discussed here? Is that necessary?

 

5. Figures in this paper are skillfully contrived enough, but some figures need more explanations, including:

(1) the units of the elevation values in Figure 1(a).

(2) the density of sampling points in Figure 3.

(3) the meaning of shear strains in Figure 6, etc.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer:

We greatly appreciate all of your valuable suggestions, and we have considered all of the comments carefully and revised the manuscript accordingly. Most of the contents of this paper that have been revised are shown in red.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Author,

Please have my comments here as follows.

major comments

-you are dealing with soil, landslide or rock, rock fall?

-why base friction testing

-how it is a real case study when you are testing it? 

-how testing can well represent the real scenario, why not field testing? or why not large scale testing?

-how do you justify the reliability of the test results copared with field results? is there any field test results?

-how do you design the test?

 

 

minor comments

-poor abstract

-not clear methodology

-poor literature review 

-point of having Fig1? we know it

-not clear methodology

-how did you make Fig 4?

-fig 4 to fig 12, did you use software, how did you develop it? 

if you developed it, geometry, mesh, material properties, validation, BCs, model development, materials models are all missing

-if you attempt to conclude theoretically, then the results of model, test, and theories should be compared

-comparison with other works 

-comparison with othercase studies

-what is the criteria for rear fissure and locked landslide, formulation or visullization needed

-what is your recommendation for future control or  maybe design and future stabilization

-geometry of the test, standard test code, scope of the testing are all missing

Comments on the Quality of English Language

English very difficult to understand/incomprehensible

Author Response

Dear Reviewer:

We greatly appreciate all of your valuable suggestions, and we have considered all of the comments carefully and revised the manuscript accordingly. Most of the contents of this paper that have been revised are shown in red.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper presents a base friction test for exploring the evolutionary mechanism of the rear fissure in locked landslides. The deformation features were captured by a noncontact measurement method, and the evolutionary mechanism of the rear fissure was then analyzed accordingly. In general, the paper is well organized and has the potential for publication. I would recommend publication for this paper if the following issues are appropriately addressed:

 

1. Page 1, lines 25-26: The sentence “which is able to improve sustainable development by better ensuring the safety of lives and properties” could be changed to “which may be able to improve sustainable development by better ensuring the safety of lives and properties” to avoid underestimating the difficulty of scientific progress.

2. Page 2, lines 45-58: More literature about base friction testing, especially previous experiments, may be introduced here in order to explain why a base friction test was selected in this paper.

3. Page 2, lines 68-69: I notice that the symbol of Hcr without a subscript is not consistent with the symbol of H_cr in the section of Abstract. It is highly recommended to revise those.

4. Pages 2-3, lines 74-116: More discussions should be added to the section “Rear fissure in a locked landslide” in order to strengthen the link to sustainability. For example, how the catastrophic results induced by the Sale Hill landslide influence the sustainable development of the economy and society could be illustrated.

5. Page 4, lines 134-166: What is the thickness of the slope model? I notice that it is hard to find it, but it is critical for other researchers to repeat the experiment.

6. Pages 4-5, lines 167-207: To enhance the repeatability of the experiment in this paper, more details should be presented; for example, what is the PIV sampling frequency?

7. Page 6, Figure 3: The spatial interval between sampling points was not introduced in detail.

8. Pages 10-12, Figures 6-12: The significance of positive/negative values of shear strain are desired to be explained.

 

9. Pages 14, lines 455-474: The linkage between the stability evaluation and the base friction testing results appears to be weak. It would be more natural to link the experimental and theoretical analysis together. The experimental results may be mentioned more in the part of Discussion. In addition, a Summarized protocol of the physical model test following Fang et al., (2023) in your reference is suggested.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer:

We greatly appreciate all of your valuable suggestions, and we have considered all of the comments carefully and revised the manuscript accordingly. Most of the contents of this paper that have been revised are shown in red.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors, My comment regarding reliability was not approaprately addressed, and the authors needs to show it rather than explanation. Also, I need to check the final version to track the changes. The final format shoudl be with track change.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors addressed my comments.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Since they Authors added some additional write-ups, still english check is required and suggested.

Author Response

Dear Editor and Reviewer#2:

We greatly appreciate the suggestions, and the English check has been completed. All changes in this paper have been highlighted in red for easy review by editors and reviewers.

We would like to express our gratitude again for the comments. Thanks very much!

Kind regards