Sensitivity Analysis and Technology Evaluation for a Roadable Personal Air Vehicle at the Conceptual Design Stage
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
In this article, the authors conducted a comprehensive conceptual study on the optimized design of personal air vehicles. It selected seven variables for the optimization and found additional technologies that might be incorporated to allow the design variables to meet the target values. I have several suggestions:
The authors need to provide more details about their methods. For example:
“Line 211-212: In this study, seven design variables were ultimately selected after exploring the Pareto graph and completing the P-value estimation. ”
Can the authors provide more quantitative details about how these variables were decided?
Generally speaking, for the results presented in this manuscript, I think it would be better if the authors can give more elaboration on how the initial numbers were selected in the first place, before introducing their final results as in a table format. This is necessary for readers to understand and reproduce their results.
Also, the authors should consider providing more detailed captions for each table and figure.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The present manuscript was a bout sensitivity analysis and technology evaluation for a roadable personal air vehicle at the conceptual design phase. The manuscript is generally easy to read and well written. Several specific comments are listed below for the authors to consider to make the manuscript more readable.
1) There are some formatting problems in the manuscript although they are not so serious.
2) Introduction is a bit too short. In fact, it did not review the state of the art of any similar work (either for UAV or other fixed wing aircraft0 that other researchers did in the last decade.
3) The major concern in my opinion is actually about Technology identification (Section 3.6). The authors identified some technologies that might be able to improve the aerodynamic performance and to enhance production of the vehicle. However, other than flow circulation flap, leading edge blowing and the use of pizeo-electric, there are many other methods to achieve flow control on aeroplanes. It is unclear why the authors chose these techniques as the authors did not explain the reasons. In addition, the reviewer believes that it is more appropriate to consider more techniques rather than just considering the techniques mentioned in the manuscript. In addition, some techniques mentioned like the nano-coating and liquid metal are still under development, application of these techniques to an actual aerovehicle seems unrealistic in this stage. As a result, it is recommended that the authors should also consider some more realistic techniques that are currently in use by aerovehicles in order to produce more realistic results.
The reviewer would recommend the present manuscript to be published in Applied Sciences once the above points 2 and 3 are addressed.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript has been well revised and I'll recommend it to be published in Applied Sciences.
