Sustainable Cross-Laminated Timber Structures in a Seismic Area: Overview and Future Trends
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper presents the review of the-state-of-art research. The topic is important and will be important. However, the review paper should be significantly improved by adding additional research that is more recently found. Currently, only three 2020 references and few 2019 references are included. More recent articles should be included and discussed to capture more recent studies. Recently, a handful of papers in 2020 and 2021 are published, but it was not captured. So, the contribution is limited until substantially revised with capturing recent papers.
Author Response
The authors thank the Reviewer for his detailed and stimulating comment on the paper. The comment has given us the opportunity of improving the manuscript, as it is in the revised version. The detailed response to the reviewer’s comment is provided in the following.
Comment_ The paper presents the review of the-state-of-art research. The topic is important and will be important. However, the review paper should be significantly improved by adding additional research that is more recently found. Currently, only three 2020 references and few 2019 references are included. More recent articles should be included and discussed to capture more recent studies. Recently, a handful of papers in 2020 and 2021 are published, but it was not captured. So, the contribution is limited until substantially revised with capturing recent papers.
Authors’ response_ The Reviewer's comment is right. According to with the Reviewer, the references have been revised by adding 9 new papers published between 2020 and 2021 (5 papers dated 2020, 1 dated 2019 and 3 dated 2021). Such papers have been added in the different Sections of the paper and some of them discussed when considered necessary. The added References are indicated with the colour ‘cyan’, as well as the new sentences included in the revised manuscript.
Reviewer 2 Report
The article submitted for review is an overview type manuscript. The information contained therein relate to cross-laminated timber structures.
I have no doubts that the subject is worth promoting, expanding and is in line with interests of structural engineers and researchers.
The main advantages of the article are:
- A very good overview of the bibliography and sources. Each part is well documented and prepared.
- In the manuscript reader may find some interesting practical issues regarding timber structures with particular regard for a cross-laminated timber members and their relation to seismic areas.
In my personal opinion this is a very well written, documented, prepared and structured review article. I would like to recommend the manuscript for a publication in Journal of Applied Sciences.
Author Response
Comment_The article submitted for review is an overview type manuscript. The information contained therein relate to cross-laminated timber structures.
I have no doubts that the subject is worth promoting, expanding and is in line with interests of structural engineers and researchers.
The main advantages of the article are:
- A very good overview of the bibliography and sources. Each part is well documented and prepared.
- In the manuscript reader may find some interesting practical issues regarding timber structures with particular regard for a cross-laminated timber members and their relation to seismic areas.
In my personal opinion this is a very well written, documented, prepared and structured review article. I would like to recommend the manuscript for a publication in Journal of Applied Sciences.
Authors’ response_ The authors thank the Reviewer for appreciating the paper contents and for his positive comments.
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors did a good job in compiling and presenting existing knowledge for CLT structures. It is however important to stress, in section 7, that CLT have neither been tested against real seismic motions nor designed to bear properly detailed seismic links that would help during a severe earthquake. In general, we do not expect to have CLT high rise buildings but only a good alternative seismic structural system for structures with a few stories. Parametric numerical analyses of some benchmark CLT structures under strong seismic motions are also needed.
Author Response
Comment_ The authors did a good job in compiling and presenting existing knowledge for CLT structures. It is however important to stress, in section 7, that CLT have neither been tested against real seismic motions nor designed to bear properly detailed seismic links that would help during a severe earthquake. In general, we do not expect to have CLT high rise buildings but only a good alternative seismic structural system for structures with a few stories. Parametric numerical analyses of some benchmark CLT structures under strong seismic motions are also needed.
Authors’ response_ The authors thank the Reviewer for appreciating the paper and for his positive comment. According to his suggestion, the following sentence has been added in Section 7: ‘Despite that, no observation on the behavior of seismically-designed CLT buildings hit by real earthquakes is available at the date…’. Such sentence helps to highlight that at the date only experimental results can confirm the good seismic behavior of CLT buildings, because no buildings damaged by real earthquakes have been observed in the worldwide, due to their (relative) recent introduction.
As far as the fact the only low or mid-rise buildings we expect, the authors agree with the reviewer; in fact, it has been highlighted in the Introduction.
Reviewer 4 Report
First of all, the language quality is low in this paper, which really affects the reading and understanding of it.
I admit that some figures are very interesting, such as Figures 6 and 9. Are these figures originally created by the authors? They do not seem to contribute to the review.
Author Response
Comment_ First of all, the language quality is low in this paper, which really affects the reading and understanding of it.
I admit that some figures are very interesting, such as Figures 6 and 9. Are these figures originally created by the authors? They do not seem to contribute to the review.
Authors’ response_ The authors thank the Reviewer for his comment on the paper. The language has been revised and some errors eliminated.
As far as the Figures, thank you for your appreciation, and they have been created by the authors. We believe that the figures are useful to support the manuscript content because the paper is a state-of-the-art overview and then it should be understandable by all the scientific community (and not only by experts of the sector).
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper has included recent research and captured some new information.
