Earthquake Analysis of an Old RC Minaret Retrofitting with Shape Memory Alloy

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors developed a recognition and pose estimation method for stacked sheet metal parts. To address issues such as detection failure and the difficulty in locating gripping points caused by the stacked placement of irregular parts in the automated sheet metal production process, a highly robust method for the recognition and pose estimation of parts is proposed. First, a decoding framework for parts of two-dimensional code is established. The morphological closed operation and topology of contours are used to locate the two-dimensional code, and the type of the part is decoded according to the structure of the two-dimensional code extracted by the projection method. Second, the recognition model of the occluded part type is constructed. The edge information of parts is extracted. The contour convex hull is used to split the part contours, and the similarity of segmented contours is calculated based on the Fourier transform. Finally, the occluded parts are located. The corner points of the metal parts are extracted by the adjacency factor of the differential chain code sequence and the contour radius of curvature. The transformation matrix between the part and the standard template is calculated using similar contour segments and contour corner points. A stereo vision system is built to detect and localize the occluded parts for experiments. The experimental results show that the decoding framework can accurately decode two-dimensional code made by a laser under low-contrast conditions; the average recognition rate can reach 93% at multiple occlusion rates; the localization error is less than 0.8 mm; and the pose angle error is less than 0.6°. The methods proposed in this paper have high accuracy and robustness.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer;

The authors gratefully acknowledge the time devoted by the reviewer in critically examining our manuscript and making suggestions on further improving the quality of the manuscript. We thank the reviewer for the encouraging comments made on the article and hope our response adequately clarifies the issues raised.

Point1#

The manuscript has been rephrased. The changes have been highlighted in red color to verify compliance with the suggestion. Additionally, a grammar check has been performed using the Grammarly tool.

Point2#

The authors would like to humbly point out that a large number of studies are available for similar cases. However, most of these studies are applicable to other types of SMA to study the mechanical and seismic response of different structures. A number of these sources were initially mentioned in the manuscript, while some were inadvertently omitted. The authors thank the reviewer for making the constructive suggestion to improve the state of the art, thereby improving the quality of this manuscript.

Regrads

Reviewer 2 Report

In the present article nickel titanium SMA is considered in a minaret of an old church transformed into a mosque to control the seismic response in terms of displacements, stresses and accelerations. The assessment of the seismic behavior was performed based on a modal and then transient analysis with the ANSYS. The main objective was to determine the effectiveness of the addition of shape memory alloys by varying their number. In this research, the behavior of an old minaret is investigated, before and after being retrofitted using SMA dampers, Ni-Ti alloys. The effectiveness of such technique is assessed based on the action of recent Algerian earthquake the May 21, 2003 Boumerdes earthquake. In general, the topic is interesting, but a thorough revisions are required to be well handled.

1. The language is premature and awkward in the expressions. There are also a lot of typos in the contents, e.g., Line 43. ‘…the action of recent Algerian earthquake the May 21, 2003 Boumerdes 43 earthquake…’. A thorough language check is suggested.

2. The authors performed the survey of building assessment and novel retrofitting techniques, which is a great work. The reviewer suggests to focus more on the short comings of the existing references. The following papers related to the building assessment and novel retrofitting techniques can be included into the Intro. 10.1016/j.jobe.2022.104904; 10.1061/(ASCE)1084-0702(2007)12:6(700).

3. In the numerical modelling of minaret, the modelling details are required to be added. For example, how to consider the elements or materials? How to verify the effectiveness with the experimental data? How to mesh in the analysis? More details see 10.1016/j.strusafe.2023.102330.

4. It seems in the transient analysis, only the time history analysis is performed. Thus, how to consider the influence of earthquake levels (DBE or MCE)? How to perform the retrofitting design via SMA? How to consider the influence of the positions of SMA in the analysis result? More details see 10.1080/13632460409350495

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper can be accepted in the current form.