Method for Ranking Pulse-like Ground Motions According to Damage Potential for Reinforced Concrete Frame Structures

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This article covers an interesting topic in the research field of earthquake engineering. My recommendation is that this paper is suitable for publication after minor revision.

 

Specific comments:

1.

It is not explained if the Pearson correlation coefficient or the Spearman rank correlation coefficient is used in the study and the reason for the choice.

2.

Each of the combined seismic parameters quantity has different units. However, these quantities have been combined in a sum of quantities with different units (equation (8)). Has the combined parameter a physical meaning? Provide a comment about that.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Different intensity measures, scalar or vector, have been used for the damage potential of RC buildings. In the present paper, pulse like ground motions are ranked based on their damage potential for RC frame buildings. Buildings with four, five eight and 15 stories are analyzed for 240 pulse like ground motions and 16 intensity measures are computed. Finally, the ground motions are ranked based on damage potential. The paper is well written and easy to be understood. The reviewer has some minor comments:

 

• the buildings are symmetric. That is the authors must clearly state in the text.
• Some publications on the topic are missed (see below):

 

Papasotiriou, A., Athanatopoulou, A.

seismic Intensity Measures Optimized for Low-rise Reinforced Concrete Frame Structures

Journal of Earthquake Engineering, 2021

 

Scalar Structure-Specific Ground Motion Intensity Measures for Assessing the Seismic Performance of Structures: A Review

Kostinakis, K., Fontara, I.-K., Athanatopoulou, A.M.

Journal of Earthquake Engineering, 2018, 22(4), pp. 630–665

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The methodology to rank the pulse-like ground motions presented in this manuscript seems relevant. However, the selected four buildings models are of considerably long natural periods. For example, the 15-story model has a natural period of 2.73 second, which approximately corresponds that of 30-story building. A concern arises regarding to the engineering feasibility of the obtained results. Please consider an improvement.

 

 

Lines 83 and 84:

“However, the aforementioned studies have .. however, few studies have ..”

It may be better to replace the second “however” by other word.

 

Line 153: Please cite (1) the software IDARC-2D, and (2) the I-K trilinear hysteretic model.

 

Lines 157 and 161: “C30”, “grade I steel” may be a terminology of the Chinese standards. Please consider to replace by general wording.

 

Lines 162 and 163: The coefficients α, β, γ may define the above mentioned trilinear hysteretic model. Please provide a force-drift diagram for α = 8, β = 1, and γ = 0.5.

 

Section 4.1; Four structural models

The natural period of low/medium-rise buildings based on recent design codes may approximately become “0.1 multiplied by the number of stories (in second).” In this regard, the natural periods listed in Table 3 seem rather long, so these models are supposed to be building based on considerably old design codes. Please justify the reason.

 

Figure 5: “(b) 15-story” -> “(d) 15-story”

Lines 209-210: “R2:” “2” should be superscript.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript is well improved and recommended to publish as paper of the journal of Buildings.