Analysis of Seismic Isolation Performance of X-Shaped Rubber Bearings (XRBs)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper describes a detailed analysis of the seismic safety performance using X-shaped rubber bearing under seismic action. However, the analysis condition is not clear, so reviewer suggests following points to improve.

 

・Please add the reason why an analysis target is limited to one type of 3-story concrete plane frame building.

・If the design of isolation layer is based on some reasons, please add the explanation.

・There is no explanation regarding the damping factor of structural model.

・Please add the reason why these earthquakes (El Centro, Kobe, and Northridge)are selected. The periodic characteristics seems to be almost same.

・Regarding Fig. 6, please confirm the vertical scale.

Author Response

Please see the attachment titled "author to response reviewer -1" for the reply of the first reviewer.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript entitled “Analysis of seismic isolation performance of X-shaped rubber bearing (XRB)" have been written on the study of seismic isolation performance of buildings with three different bearings. Finite element analysis (FEA) and nonlinear dynamic time-history analysis have been used to assess the performance of XRB and compared with typical rubber bearing (TRB) and TRB with retaining wall protection (RWP). The paper has been written in a simple language and easy to understand. While the manuscript contents some valuable information about seismic performance of isolation techniques that are beneficial to the research community, it does not provide much detail assessment of the suggested isolation techniques. Performance of such isolation bearings in terms of displacement, velocity and acceleration responses are not sufficient to conclude about its effectiveness.  Hence, it is recommended to revise this manuscript and address following comments:

1.       Keywords (after Abstract) should be rearranged in alphabetical order.

2.       Section 3, First paragraph, line 4: For the benefit of international reader, it is strongly suggested to state the seismic intensity in peak ground acceleration (PGA) rather than seismic intensity of 8 degrees of China.

3.       Section 3.1, last paragraph: It is not clear how authors come up with damping coefficient of dampers as 50, It is stated that it is based on the displacement limit requirement but no any further details have been presented. Also, is it in percentage or anything else?

4.       Table 1: It is very unusual to have compressive strength of concrete as 14.3 MPa. Please provide justification why the low value of strength of concrete has been used in the analysis.

5.       Section 4.2: This section 4.2 is all about the presentation of results from the analysis. There is not much critical discussion about the obtained results. So, suggested to change the heading of this 4.2 as "Results" and add another section 4.3 as "Discussion of results" and present the critical analysis of all the results obtained from the analysis.

6.       Section 4.2.1., last paragraph (last 8 lines): It is not clear how these numbers (shear damage limit and maximum bearing displacements) are calculated for each scenario. In order for readers to understand these, it is recommended to further explain this paragraph and provide necessary details about these.

7.       Section 4.2.2, last paragraph: It is not clear how these velocities are read from the figure 10?

8.       Section 4.2.3, last paragraph, lines 2 and 3: What do you mean by maximum seismic isolation transmission is about 0.5 under…..? Please clarify

9.       There are some editorial errors as below:

·       1% PE includes 00 after %, please correct this throughout the manuscript. For e.g. line 11 in abstract.

·       Abstract, line 11, “compared” is not a good word here and should be changed to “conducted” or similar word.

·       Section 1, last paragraph. Line 6: delete space before “This”

·       Figure 4: what is figure c?  caption "c" is missing.

·       Section 3.2, last paragraph, second last line: What is ‘d’? Delete “effect” after P-Delta.

 

·       Section 4.2.3, last paragraph, line 5, delete space before “When”. Line 7, delete space before “The maximum”.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment titled "author to response reviewer -2" for the reply of the Second reviewer.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Authors done an excellent work on X-shaped rubber bearing (XRB), the below mentioned suggestion to improve the quality of the article. 

1. The paper does not follow the required format. Please check the guidelines carefully and fix it.

2. The literature review is incomplete. Several relevant references are missing.

3. The introduction should clearly explain the key limitations of prior work that are relevant to this paper.

4. Contributions should be highlighted more. It should be made clear what is novel and how it addresses the limitations of prior work. 

5. The authors should explain clearly what  the differences are between the prior work and the solution presented in this paper.

6. There are inconsistencies in the notations used through the paper. Please make it consistent. 

7. There is not enough discussion of the experimental results. 

8. Some text must be added to discuss the future work or research opportunities.

Author Response

Please see the attachment titled "author to response reviewer -3" for the reply of the third reviewer.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Please check the unit of the vertical axis of Fig.5.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript has now been revised as per the comments provided. However, there is one editorial suggestion that needs to be fixed as below:

Figure 3: captions (a), (b) and (c) should be at in the front. For e.g. a) Horizontal force-displacement hysteresis model of bearing, b) damper etc

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.