Effect of Dimensional Variables on the Behavior of Trees for Biomechanical Studies
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This paper presents an interesting study referring to Finite Element Analysis of wood and the influence of dendrometric characteristics of the trees. Slenderness, tapering, height and load level were used to analyze the tree mechanical behavior. In order to analyze the safety factor, the active loads were obtained in FEM simulations.
The results of the analysis are relevant and may allow decisions to be made in extreme weather conditions.
However, I have a few remarks:
Row 22: “The maximum positive and negative values are not equal …”
It is evident that are not equal! The sentence should be reformulated.
Row 409: Figure 3. that presents graphics of stem deflection at different heights for eight trees are not clear. The figures are not readable.
Author Response
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Reviewer 2 Report
Please, make the content more readable by introducing descriptions to the tables. It is necessary to supplement the applications with more readable and specific ones.
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Reviewer 3 Report
Incorporating several simplifications, numerical simulation model for risk analysis of falling trees to evaluate the influence of dimensional parameters of trees on deflections and stress components are made in this study. The analysis and obtained results may be interesting to readers in the field of Biomechanics. I have noticed some problems of this paper which should be corrected before publication.
• Table 3 is missing.
• Letters and symbols in figures are too small to read, for example, those in Figure 1.
• Both of font types, Italic and Roman, are used to show an identical variable, for example, q in the right hand side of Eq.(1) and that in the left hand side of Eq. (2). Such Roman should be changed to Italic.
• To show decimal point, both “ . “ and “ , “ are used, as shown in lines 213 and 215.
Author Response
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Reviewer 4 Report
The manuscript presents a detailed finite element analysis based computational work on the behaviour of trees with varying dimensional features under static mechanical loading. Many realistic phenomena such as the true nature of the loading conditions, and complicated material properties of trees are well-addressed. The methodology mostly seems to be technically sound. The work possesses merit. It is well-structured and written. Authors may wish to address the comments below in order to add more quality to the article.
- Line 89: A controlled tension (pulling test) is mentioned to produce bending moment in elastic range, which is correct. However, these types of loads are transverse loads (not couple moments causing pure bending), which are also capable of simultaneously causing transverse shear inside the trunk of the tree, especially when the tree trunk is large in diameter, similar to a stubby beam, for which transverse shear stresses should develop along with normal stresses due to bending moment. Authors may wish to address this phenomenon. If transverse shear stresses are negligible, why?
- Authors should comment about why loadings depicted in Figure 1 are chosen as bending moments. This is not entirely wrong, it is an approach; however, a more realistic approach would be applying transverse wind loads (either point or distributed) onto the trunk so that not just bending moments are generated inside the trunk but also transverse shear forces. Again, they seem to be neglected.
- Lines 267 - 273: Material properties for the orthotropic model for three E's and three G's, along with the mentioned Table 3 is missing within the text. They should all be provided for clarification.
- Although the article addresses that the realistic dynamic transient loading is not adopted for this study, and only static loading is used, a dynamic modal analysis could add more value to this work in addition to its current achievements. It can be carried out as future work.
- A few typos are observed. A proofreading is recommended.
Author Response
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Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Applications should be segregated and supplemented with more detailed information.
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