Cause Investigation of Fractures in the Anti-Arc Portion of the Gravity Dam’s Overflow and the Top of the Substation Tunnel

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript titled "Cause investigation of fractures in the anti-arc portion of the gravity dam's overflow and the top of the substation tunnel" is well written. The following points can be incorporated before the next stage.

1. Abstract can be included with some more factual data from the results obtained. 

2. There are a few typos in the manuscript. Authors may kindly check and correct all of them. For instance, the heading of table 3 is given as 'mouth' instead of 'month'.

3. Kindly substantiate the reason for choosing only the anti-arc portion of the dam while some other portions are also prone to extreme weather changes.

4. What is the correlation between theoretical and real-time conditions? How the error value influences the real-time conditions?

5. There are many general statements in the results without proper references. Kindly include references for all such general statements from the recently published articles. 

The manuscript is having good language but needs finetuning before submitting the revisions.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The investigates the causes of fractures in the anti-arc portion of a concrete gravity dam and the top of a substation tunnel in a case study with numerical simulation. This topic and results are interesting. However, the following comments should be fully addressed before being accepted:

1. The paper mentions that cracks have a significant impact on the safety and longevity of dam structures, but it is not clear how these cracks will affect the structures. The authors should discuss some representative types of cracks and the mechanisms by which they can cause damage to the dam structures.

2. The paper mentions that numerical simulation assessment approaches for dam structures have seen significant development, but it is not clear how this study contributes to that development. In other words, what is novelty if this paper compared with previous studies?

3. The last two paragraphs in the introduction section must be re-written to improve the quality of the manuscript. The current challenges/knowledge gaps, the goal and objectives, and the novelties/contributions must be clearly presented.

4. Which software does author use for simulation, ANSYS, ABAQUS or other software? Can the authors provide more details on the parameters used in your FE models? How did the authors determine and optimize these values? Does the author conduct convergence analysis to determine the mesh size? What are the element types? What are the boundary conditions? What are the criteria for choosing two sites (points 1 and 2) for observation?

5. The majority of figures and tables are in low quality. Please try to follow the same font style, if possible. Such as Figures 12, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29. Please improve the quality and font size of all figures to reach publishable quality level. Figs. 28 and 29 need to be redrawn.

6. The authors should consider including more discussion of the limitations of their study, particularly in terms of generalizability to other dam structures. Please add a separate discussion before conclusion regarding practical implementation of current study. What are your future recommendations. This would help readers understand the scope of the research and its potential implications.

7. The conclusions should be extended with more discussion of future works.

8. Minor grammar and syntax issues need correction to improve readability. Please proofread the manuscript to avoid typos and grammatical mistakes.

9. Please improve the introduction. The literature survey should be comprehensive, and more relative information related to cracking problems in concrete should be briefly included. It is also recommended to include these following recent studies in the literature review:

Crack monitoring using smart sensors:

•            Tan, X., Abu-Obeidah, A., Bao, Y., Nassif, H. and Nasreddine, W., (2021). Measurement and visualization of strains and cracks in CFRP post-tensioned fiber reinforced concrete beams using distributed fiber optic sensors. Automation in Construction, 124, p.103604.

 

Minor grammar and syntax issues need correction to improve readability. Please proofread the manuscript to avoid typos and grammatical mistakes.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Based on the finite element method, the author simulated the temperature and stress fields inside the concrete dam, providing an explanation for the occurrence of cracks at the top of the substation tunnel and proposing reinforcement measures. This is a meaningful and interesting study. However, I have the following concerns regarding this manuscript:

1. The author should carefully review the manuscript to check for any formatting and writing errors, especially the manuscript contains a large number of figures. The captions and images in Figures 4-7 may not correspond properly, at least they do not align with the descriptions in the text. Additionally, there are two Figure 19 on page 17.

2. Is there an error in the subdivision of elements in the left side of the bottom surface of the substation tunnel in Figure 8, where neighboring elements do not share nodes?

3. The simulation results of the temperature field in Figure 6 show that the highest temperature region is located at the water surface of the upstream dam, significantly higher than the surrounding concrete temperature. What could explain this result?

4. The engineering case lacks many essential details. For example, the elevation of the dam crest and the dam base should be provided. Additionally, I suggest the author include a profile drawing with elevation scales in a single figure within the manuscript. This will help readers understand the crucial position of the upstream water level relative to the upstream face. The author mentions ‘tensile stress’ multiple times in the manuscript, which confuses me. Is it referring to principal stress or normal stress? This terminology should be used with precision. Similar issues are found in Figure 12 regarding deformation.

5. Regarding the sentence in lines 222-224: ‘The greatest water level in front of the dam is 165.53 meters, which is lower than the reservoir's average water level (166.0 meters), and the reservoir is in a condition of discharge, according to observation records of water level in the reservoir.’ I did not understand its meaning.

6. Many statements in the article lack rigor, significantly affecting the scientific integrity of the study. From line 253, it appears that the author assumed the upstream water level to be the long-term average water level during the coupling calculations of the temperature and stress fields. This is unreasonable. Additionally, the author used the average monthly temperature and a specified upstream water level (149.24m) as the load for the coupling calculations of the temperature and stress fields. Can you then claim, as mentioned in lines 271-272, ‘Since the dam's construction, its temperature field and stress field have been modeled’? The statement in line 345 also confuses me regarding the content of Figure 11. The author should carefully review the article and make corrections to such imprecise statements.

7. What initial conditions were considered by the author for stress and deformation calculations? Based on the calculation results in Figure 12, it seems to be the difference in deformation between two conditions.

8. There are some studies in the field of concrete dam cracking that are worth considering for reference, such as the following: doi.org/10.3390/rs15030615; doi.org/10.3390/math11092010.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Authors have addressed all the comments of the reviewer. The manuscript can be accepted in its current form. Best wishes to all the authors.

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript has been carefully revised based on the reviewer's comments, and all comments have been addressed properly. In my opinion, the paper can be accepted in the form after the following issues are addressed.

Just one more question: In revised manuscript, the format of references should be in consistent with the requirements of the journal. Mistake of hyperlink is found in reference part. Please do proofreading for the entire manuscript.

Minor editing of English language required

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have addressed my comments, I have no more concerned.