Design and Manufacture of Composite Landing Gear for a Light Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript deals with the design and test of a composite material for implementing landing gear of UAV.
The Reviewer rose major and minor concerns with the research approach and manuscript form:
The introduction is not complete (many valuable works available in literature are missing) and it does not describe the relevance of the proposed study. Many sentences in the introduction should be justified by a proper reference. E.g. line 26 report few UAV applications, and there are repetitions: “bridge inspection” (line 28) seems to be a really specific application of the more general “inspection, and survey of structures” (line 29). What do Authors refer with “and communications” with UAV (line 29)?
Please consider also the recent applications for smart city [1], Agriculture 4.0 [2], and safety [3].
[1] F. Outay, H. A. Mengash, M. Adnan (2020). Applications of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in road safety, traffic and highway infrastructure management: Recent advances and challenges. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 141, 116-129. Doi: 10.1016/j.tra.2020.09.018
[2] Mammarella, M., Comba, L., Biglia, A., Dabbene, F. and Gay, P. (2020). Cooperative agricultural operations of aerial and ground unmanned vehicles. IEEE International Workshop on Metrology for Agriculture and Forestry, 224-229. Doi: 10.1109/MetroAgriFor50201.2020.9277573
[3] S.Sudhakar et al. (2020). Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) based Forest Fire Detection and monitoring for reducing false alarms in forest-fires. Computer Communications, 149, 1-16. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2019.10.007
The objective of this research work is not clearly stated. At line 17 I can read “This study
demonstrated the design, numerical analysis (Ansys), manufacture, and experimental verification (LabVIEW) of a composite landing gear for a UAV”, at line 73 “This study analyzed, designed, and manufactured a composite landing gear for a UAV”, line 95 “This paper presents the design, simulation, manufacturing, and testing of the UAV landing gear with a view to increasing its strength and operational life and decreasing its cost”, and at line 226 “This study designed a 12-layer CFRP for curved landing gear of a UAV with 5-kg weight and 10-kg maximum payload. Moreover, numerical simulations were conducted, a landing gear was manufactured, and experimental strain measurements were performed.”. What is the aim of this work? It is to develop a NEW landing gear? Or to develop a NEW material for a landing gear? Or to design a NEW simulation framework suitable for gear design? Please note that the NEW word is written in capital letter. Indeed, depending on the specific objective of the work, a detailed discussion about the novelty should be performed.
Line 72-80: The novelty and the scientific significance of the presented work is not stated. Authors stated (line) “The results show that the experimentally measured and the simulated strains are in good agreement and that the designed landing gear is safe under the constraint of a safety factor of 3.”. This sentence explain that the Author chose the appropriate simulation approach, but what are the improvements lead by this work? Is the designed and implemented gear more performing and/or cost effective than another (already available) typology?
Minors
Please remove the active form “we”, rephrasing in passive form.
Linea 13, It is not clear how the sentence “A green UAV powered by solar energy could enable long-duration transportation” is related with this work. In addition, what is a green UAV?
Lines 30-37: Out of topic. Why these information regarding a specific military UAV autopilot accuracy are here reported?
Line 15: The need of suitable landing gears, which are able to ensure that the UAV can take-off and land safely, are important not only when the price of the cargo and UAV increase. Please better justify this research work and locate it in the whole research overview. Please do not refer to Wikipedia in a research paper.
Line 100: what is the “left-hand side of Figure 2”? Is it Figure 2b?
In the Reviewer opinion, the manuscript does not fit the quality standard of the Journal and it is thus not suitable for the publication in the present form.
Author Response
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your very careful review of our paper, and for the comments, corrections and suggestions that ensued. The manuscript has carefully been revised according to the comments. The responses are given in a point-by-point manner in the attachment. Changes to the manuscript are shown in red. I hope the revision could meet the expectations.
Yours sincerely,
Angela Yen-Chu Liang
Associate professor,
Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics,
Chinese Air Force Academy, Taiwan,
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors
I find this topic interesting in the area of Optimal Design of Composite Landing Gear for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.
However, it is necessary to show concretely because the explanation is insufficient for the figures and formulas. The results for mechanical properties were generally valid. However, the weight reduction is not detailed, so additional data etc. are required.
Page3 Line111 (Figure 1)
To make the figure easier to understand, change the color of the part to be explained.
Page3 Line111 (Figure 1)
To make the figure easier to understand, change the color of the part to be explained.
Page5 Line150 (Table2)
What formula is used in the Ansys Composite Pre-Post (ACP)?
Also, 12PLY is 50% heavier than 8PLY, so I don't think it's a weight reduction. If you consider the balance between weight reduction and mechanical properties, it is necessary to describe that.
Page6 Line157
Do you use a mold release agent during molding?
Page8 Line197 (Figure 11)
Does Figure 11 need a diagram? Please explain in the text.
Page8 Line201 (Figure 12)
I can't understand it because there is no explanation of the figure. If it's just calibration information, please indicate it in the text. I can't read the characters in the figure.
Page8 Line201 (Figure 13)
The explanation of the figure is insufficient. Also, enlarge the figure.
Page9 Line205 (Figure 14)
The explanation of the figure is insufficient. The author needs to be specific about what he is showing.
Page9 Line210
Please explain what Δεi etc. in this formula indicates. Not enough information.
Page10 Line243 (Conclusions)
Where does 4 appear in the treatise? There is no point in sudden data coming out.
Please describe in the text together with the molding method and test method.
Author Response
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your very careful review of our paper, and for the comments, corrections and suggestions that ensued. The manuscript has carefully been revised according to the comments. The responses are given in a point-by-point manner in the attachment. Changes to the manuscript are shown in red. I hope the revision could meet the expectations.
Yours sincerely,
Angela Yen-Chu Liang
Associate professor,
Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics,
Chinese Air Force Academy, Taiwan,
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Authors carefully addressed all the reviewer comments on a point-to-point base.
The scientific relevance of the manuscript is now properly presented, and the quality of the paper is thus suitable for the publication.
Author Response
Dear Sir:
Thank you for your very careful review of our paper, and for the comments, corrections and suggestions that ensued.
Thank you very much.
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear author
Most of the points I pointed out were fixed.
There are many figures. I think you can combine Figures 7, 8 and 9 into one figure.
Author Response
Dear Sir:
Thanks for your valuable comments. The manuscript has been revised according to your comment:
The Figure 7 , Figure 8 and Figure 9 have been combined together in Figure 7(a)-Figure 7(c).
I hope the revision could meet the expectations.
Thank you.
