Probabilistic Analysis of Ground Surface Settlement of Excavation Considering Spatial Variable Modified Cam-Clay Model Parameters

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper investigates an interesting topic, by considering the probabilistic transient hydro-mechanical coupling analysis of excavation settlement considering spatial variable deformation parameters using an MCS-FORM hybrid approach. The paper, in particular, investigates the ground surface settlement of 96 staged constructed excavations. The methodology of the paper is pertinent and English is also fine. Several observations need to be considered:

1. Introduction: novelties need to be specified in order to explain the originality of the paper against the existing literature.

2. Section 3.1.1: the details of the numerical model need to be specified.

In particular:

A) How the dimension of the mesh was defined?

B) How does the constrain of "normal displacement" work

C) How was the phreatic water boundary decided?

Section 3.1.2

The authors wrote that the model parameters can be derived from conventional laboratory tests. Please specify more details.

Section 3.2

On which basis the four deformation parameters were chosen?

Section 4.1

Figure 5 should be divided into two bigger figures, in order to make it more readble.

Setcion 4.3.1 

A) Figure 9 is not clearly reable. Please improve.

B) The authors wrote that the spatial variability of the model parameters contributes indispensably to the resulting deformation and demands to be considered in the analysis without specifying the reason of this sentence. Please expand this part.

Section 5:

Please avoid direct questions, such as "why is there such a discrepancy between the Wuhan area and the Shenzhen area?"

Section 6:

The conclusion needs to include the further study that is planned to be done (as written in Section 5).

For these reasons, the paper needs major revisions. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Review for the Applied Sciences Journal on the manuscript entitled: “Probabilistic Analysis of Ground Surface Settlement of Excavation Considering Spatial Variable Modified Cam-clay Model Parameters”.

 (Manuscript ID: applsci-1895910)

 Authors: Hao Cheng, Hui Chen, Hanying Jia, Shu Zhang, Xiao Liu

Keywords: modified cam-clay model; reliability; ground surface settlement; excavation

This study investigated the ground surface settlement of staged constructed excavation considering spatial variable parameters of the modified Cam-clay model (MCC) based on random field theory

 Here are some of my comments or suggestions in detail:

Line 75: Goh et al. (2008) …, please check the in-text reference format. Please follow the consistency of the whole manuscript carefully.

 Line 155: "which was generalized into a homogeneous and isotropic silt layer to simplify the computation" since it's a ground settlement analysis, is there any justification?? Any references to add? I suggest plotting a profile of the excavation sequence and subsurface soil layers.

 Line 199: “According to the borehole data obtained by the survey”, what’s the source of data? Who did the test? Please clarify and add references.

 Line 204: Please clarify sample preparation if it's done by the Authors.

 Line 210:  “the rebound index Cs (the slope of the rebound curve)”, from Figure 4, could you please briefly explain the calculation of Cs?

Line 223: “Table 1. Physical and mechanical parameters of clayey silt for the excavation” kindly explain how physical and mechanical properties were obtained?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors answered to all the requests in th edue details.

Only points 2B and 2C are still quite problematic:

(B) The "normal displacement" mentioned in Comment(B) was a typo. The actual is “horizontal displacement”, indicating that no horizontal displacement occurs at both sides of the model boundary.

This is not proper: the boundaries need to represent the shear behaviour of the soil. 

Please refer to:

Coleman JL, Bolisetti C, Whittaker AS (2016) Time-domain soil-structure interaction analysis of nuclear facilities, Nuclear Engineering and Design 298 (2016) 264–270.

Forcellini, D.; Alzabeebee, S. Seismic fragility assessment of geotechnical seismic isolation (GSI) for bridge configuration. Bull. Earthq. Eng. 2021.

Su L, Lu J, Elgamal A, Arulmoli AK (2017) Seismic performance of a pile-supported wharf: three dimensional fnite element simulation. Soil Dyn Earthq Eng 95:167–179

 

(C) The phreatic water boundary was determined according to the observation that the buried depth of phreatic water level by drilling during the investigation was typically 0~2.6 m (Line 168). For computational efficiency, we set a unified water level of 0 m in the numerical model.

It is not clear what the authors mean: "for computational efficiency". A parametric study on the phreatic level should be performed, or you can refer to this previous one:

Forcellini D (2020) The Role of the Water Level in the Assessment of Seismic Vulnerability for the 23 November 1980 Irpinia–Basilicata Earthquake, Geosciences 2020, 10, 229; doi:10.3390/geosciences10060229

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript looks perfect; no further revisions are required.

Thanks.

Author Response

No comments thus no response.