Research on the Decoupling of the Parallel Vehicle Tilting and Steering Mechanism
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The alignment of the text with the images seems wrong in some cases. It is possible that it is only the copy corresponding to the revision.
The photographs in table 2 are too small. It would be convenient to display the information in another format.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Dear reviewer:
The authors are very grateful for your comments on the manuscript. According to your advice, The authors amend the relevant part of the manuscript. Some of your questions are answered below.
Point 1: The alignment of the text with the images seems wrong in some cases. It is possible that it is only the copy corresponding to the revision.
Response 1: The authors re-type the paper according to the template given by the MDPI website.
Point 2: The photographs in table 2 are too small. It would be convenient to display the information in another format.
Response 2: The authors add Figure 9 to show the pictures in the original table. The contents of the original Table 2 are shown in Table 2 and Figure 9 of the re-uploaded revised manuscript.
The authors once again thank the reviewer for your careful review of the manuscript in your busy schedules.
Sincerely yours
Ruolin GAO, Haitao LI, Wenjun WEI, Ya WANG.
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper discusses the coupling between turning and tilting mechanisms in narrow-body vehicles. The concept of narrow-body is not discussed and if left to the reader, the paper is rather misleading. Hence, I have few suggestions for the authors to make the paper clearer:
1) Discuss the narrow-body vehicles that you refer to this paper. It is obvious to me that the authors would nor refer to vehicles like Porche 964 but significantly slower moving vehicles.
2) In the introduction, the rationale of the work is really unrelated to the subject of the paper. The fact that 75% of vehicles carry only the drivers has little to do with narrow vehicles. However, is common that a vehicle is driven under different circumstances – empty or full. There are statistics on that in each and every country in case the authors need to go deep into the matter. However, I believe that the work is little related to that aspect.
3) New vehicle trends might include driver only vehicle but the paper does not deal with that aspect
4) The kinematics of the turning/tilting are considered only from kinematics perspective. Hence, the paper refers to the kinematics of mechanisms encountered in vehicles similar to ATVs. Not the dynamics.
5) In Figure 2, the tire tread is assumed infinite rigid – assumption that should be stated.
6) In simulation and experiment part, the validation is carried against a reduced-scale mechanism – or on the mechanism sketched in Figure 8?wOn Figure 8b I would suggest to indicate the size of the elements.
7) Please critically discuss the results in Figure 9.
8) Conclusions should be revisited in the light of the corrections. No dynamic analysis is considered. The dynamic analysis provides the insight of the performance of the mechanism. The kinematic performance is a matter of static mechanisms theory.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
Dear reviewer:
The authors are very grateful for your comments on the manuscript. According to your advice, The authors amend the relevant part of the manuscript. Some of your questions are answered below.
Point 1: Discuss the narrow-body vehicles that you refer to this paper. It is obvious to me that the authors would nor refer to vehicles like Porche 964 but significantly slower moving vehicles.
Response 1: The authors discuss narrow-body vehicles on lines 30-37 in the re-uploaded revised manuscript, and add supplementary instructions on narrow-body vehicles for their low-speed usage scenario on line 37.
Point 2: In the introduction, the rationale of the work is really unrelated to the subject of the paper. The fact that 75% of vehicles carry only the drivers has little to do with narrow vehicles. However, is common that a vehicle is driven under different circumstances – empty or full. There are statistics on that in each and every country in case the authors need to go deep into the matter. However, I believe that the work is little related to that aspect.
Response 2: The authors delete the description of this section and supplement the discussion of narrow-body vehicles’ usage scenarios.
Point 3: New vehicle trends might include driver only vehicle but the paper does not deal with that aspect
Response 3: The authors believe that the reviewer is correct and add in the introduction a description of single-occupant vehicles or vehicles with only one passenger.
Point 4: The kinematics of the turning/tilting are considered only from kinematics perspective. Hence, the paper refers to the kinematics of mechanisms encountered in vehicles similar to ATVs. Not the dynamics.
Response 4: The paper does take the kinematics of the mechanism as the research content, and does not involve the content of dynamics. The authors have some inappropriate descriptions in the original manuscript, which have caused misunderstandings. The inappropriate descriptions have been corrected in the re-uploaded revised manuscript.
Point 5: In Figure 2, the tire tread is assumed infinite rigid – assumption that should be stated.
Response 5: Thank you for the reminder, the authors take note of this and make revisions.
Point 6: In simulation and experiment part, the validation is carried against a reduced-scale mechanism – or on the mechanism sketched in Figure 8? On Figure 8b I would suggest to indicate the size of the elements.
Response 6: The experiment was done with the prototype shown in Figure 8. The parameters of the prototype are consistent with the parameters of the simulation model (only a few parameters are approximated during manufacture). These parameters are all from Table 1. The authors make supplementary instructions on lines 239-243 in the re-uploaded revised manuscript. Corresponding letters and parameter are marked in Figure 8.
Point 7: Please critically discuss the results in Figure 9.
Response 7: After modification, the original Figure 9 has become Figure 10 in the re-uploaded revised manuscript. The authors add some critical discussion of the experimental results in lines 263-267, 272-279, and 282-286.
Point 8: Conclusions should be revisited in the light of the corrections. No dynamic analysis is considered. The dynamic analysis provides the insight of the performance of the mechanism. The kinematic performance is a matter of static mechanisms theory.
Response 8: To illustrate this situation, the authors add supplementary instructions on lines 288-293 of the Discussion section and rewrite the Conclusions. For the conclusion, the authors add some constraints to highlight the rigor of the conclusion
The authors once again thank the reviewer for your careful review of the manuscript in your busy schedules.
Sincerely yours
Ruolin GAO, Haitao LI, Wenjun WEI, Ya WANG.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The abstract and introduction of this paper are adequate and clearly describe the work to be presented. The methods used and the experiments are well displayed. Some minor writing corrections would improve the paper.
Overall, caution should be taken when finishing sentences as many times a “;” is used instead of “.”.
Figure 2 should be centred. Line 189, correct upper letter in “When”.
To assess the parallel mechanism, an example is used without any mentioned to its provenience. There should be an explanation on why these parameters are good to be used as an example.
When referring to an acceptable range, besides the indication of the bibliography, the acceptable range should be indicated (line 227).
In Table 2, although adding the pictures of the systems is a very good idea, their size is too small to give any real input. Maybe it would be better if they were shown outside Table 2.
The legend of Figure 9 is not correct, considering the order of the graphs shown.
Overall, the paper is well presented with minor alterations to be made.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 3 Comments
Dear reviewer:
The authors are very grateful for your comments on the manuscript. According to your advice, The authors amend the relevant part of the manuscript. Some of your questions are answered below.
Point 1: Overall, caution should be taken when finishing sentences as many times a “;” is used instead of “.”.
Response 1: The authors modify the inappropriate ";" in the manuscript according to language and semantics. These revisions are on lines 58, 63, 65, 72, 73, 112, 126, 136, 161, and 209 of the re-uploaded revised manuscript, respectively.
Point 2: Figure 2 should be centred. Line 189, correct upper letter in “When”.
Response 2: The authors modify the position and size of Figure 2 according to the template provided by the MDPI website. There is an error in the writing of "when" in line 189. Thank you for your correction. It has been corrected.
Point 3: To assess the parallel mechanism, an example is used without any mentioned to its provenience. There should be an explanation on why these parameters are good to be used as an example.
Response 3: The parameters of the example in Table 1 are determined according to the literature [7], wherein the parameters of the tilting mechanism are directly selected from the literature [7], and the parameters of the frame are designed according to the wheelbase and the track width of the vehicle. This was not stated in the original manuscript, the authors add a supplementary explanation in lines 202-205 of the re-uploaded revised manuscript.
Point 4: When referring to an acceptable range, besides the indication of the bibliography, the acceptable range should be indicated (line 227).
Response 4: The authors make a supplementary explanation in line 235 of the re-uploaded revised manuscript. The acceptable range is 0.4-1.6, based on the literature [22].
Point 5: although adding the pictures of the systems is a very good idea, their size is too small to give any real input. Maybe it would be better if they were shown outside Table 2.
Response 5: The authors add Figure 9 to show the pictures in the original table. The contents of the original Table 2 are shown in Table 2 and Figure 9 of the re-uploaded revised manuscript.
Point 6: The legend of Figure 9 is not correct, considering the order of the graphs shown.
Response 6: After modification, the original Figure 9 has become Figure 10 in the re-uploaded revised manuscript. In Figure 10(d) and Figure 10(f), there is no θ=0deg in the legend because the curve of θ=0deg is used as a reference for Δδ and Δδꞌ when θ=10deg/ or θ=20deg. This is to make the figure clearer.
The authors once again thank the reviewer for your careful review of the manuscript in your busy schedules.
Sincerely yours
Ruolin GAO, Haitao LI, Wenjun WEI, Ya WANG.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Congratulations for teh accepted paper.
