Wind-Induced Response Characteristics and Equivalent Static Wind-Resistant Design Method of Spherical Inflatable Membrane Structures

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

- There are no line numbers in the manuscript.

- P3, L3: Rewrite "the intensity of that of the natural wind"

- This reviewer recommends adding a paragraph at the end of the introduction section to present the manuscript layout.

- P5; L2: What does the blockage ratio mean?

- Cite the references for Eq. 1 & Eq.2

- P7: What do the authors mean by form-finding analysis? and how to do it

- P9; L4: What do the authors mean by the initial shape of the structure?

- P20; L5: Capitalize the first letter for each word for terminology.

- P20; reference for Eqs. 13-16:

- Does this method consider as ultimate design method or the working stress method?

- How to calculate the reactions for foundation design?

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Wind‐induced response characteristics and equivalent static wind‐resistant design method of spherical inflatable membrane structures

 

First, I would like to congratulate the authors for the effort put into this work and for the courage to submit a paper for review.

The paper deals with the subject of an experimental analysis of wind-induced response in designing spherical inflatable membrane structures. The case study contains software simulations and comparing it with wind tunnel results. The article's topic corresponds well with the scope of the Buildings journal of MDPI.

The paper presents an excellent academic level; however, there are a few comments to improve and organize the paper better:

1.    The article presents the theoretical background, although it might be improved with the literature review on the topic, right now the paper refers to 34 literature positions, out of which only 14 are not older than 5 years, more contemporary background is needed

2.    Please provide the research questions or the hypothesis for the paper at the beginning.

3.    Please focus on the abstract, for now, I think it is a little too long and blurry and contains too much information

4.    Please check the referencing section, not all papers are accurately cited

5.    Some figures are a little blurry, such as Fig. 6. And fig 7( the letters are too small, can you also improve the flowchart?

6.    From my point of view, what you called conclusions presents the study's results, and it should be called "results and discussion" (please add the discussion on comparison simulations and wind tunnel and law regulations.

7.    The so-called "conclusions" of the full paper are missing, please conclude the whole paper add limits to your research and address the possible future scopes of the studies.

8.    Please add the references for the designers on how they can use the results of your research in real-life projects.

I consider that the present study show a tangible contribution to this field, and recommend its publication with some adjustments considered as "minor revisions".

 

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors of the paper focus on evaluation of dynamic wind-induced responses of inflatable membrane structures in the design stage. A series of wind tunnel experiments are carried out to obtain the wind loads of the inflatable spherical membrane structures. Three fiberglass spherical models with representative rise‐span ratios of 0.25, 0.33, and 0.50 were selected. The geometric scale ratio of the model was assumed to be 1:100. With the experimental wind load data, based on ABAQUS non-linear dynamic time history analysis, the wind‐induced response characteristics of inflatable spherical membrane structures were obtained. The analysis took into account the influences of spans, rise‐span ratios, internal pressures, wind velocities, and cable configurations.

The results of the analysis show that, as the wind speed increases, the position of the maximum displacement changes from the top to the windward zone, which usually leads to the acceptable displacement being exceeded. On the other hand, at high wind speeds (20 m/s), increasing internal pressure can effectively reduce deflection. In this case, however, special attention should be paid to checking the strength of membrane structures.

The main goal of the authors was to formulate an equivalent static analysis method for the wind‐resistant design of inflatable spherical membrane structures.

The authors' most important achievement from a design point of view was to present the empirical formulas, recommendation values of gust response factors, and nonlinear adjustment factors.

In conclusion, I recommend that this paper be published in the Buildings Journal.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx