Measurement Repeatability of Rail Wheel Loads Caused by Rolling Surface Damages

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Kindly see file enclosed.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We attach the authors' explanations about the corrections made to the article in a separate file.

Thank you for your attention to our article.

On behalf of the collective of authors,
Gediminas Vaičiūnas

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This is an interesting paper focused on important issue considering railway transport safety. The layout of the paper is well prepared. Therefore I reccomend to publish this paper after minor revision.

Please consider comments as follow:

1. The Introduction section and literature review should cover also other important factors when considering railway safety and track damage control.

2. The discussion on influance of rail vibration on damages propagation and measurement signal should be added into text. I suggest to check follow papers: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.proeng.2017.04.414 , https://doi.org/10.21595/vp.2018.20232 , https://doi.org/10.3390/s22062368 , https://doi.org/10.21595/jve.2018.20450 . These papers covers an important issies related to the topic.

3. The influence of rail defect for the train safety should be emphasized.

4. The description and figures of measurement system should be added.

5. Please explain the reason of using Median in eq. 1, why not the nominal values or average?

6. The results obtained for the speed  60 km/h presented in figs. 11 and 12 should be discussed.

 

I would like to read the paper after minor revision.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We attach the authors' explanations about the corrections made to the article in a separate file.

Thank you for your attention to our article.

 

On behalf of the collective of authors,

Gediminas Vaičiūnas

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Summary of the work:

The present study proposes the nature and detection methods of rail wheel rolling surface damages.

Firstly, the results of measuring forces with different measurement systems are compared to investigate wheel rolling surface damage impact on vertical force measurement repeatability. Then, the BOX and WHISKER principles were used for estimating the deviation field for the measured force values. Finally, it was defined that the highest measurement repeatability of wheel vertical loads is in the case of flat on the running surface.

 

 

General comments:

The topic of the paper is interesting. However, the paper needs to be improved on the basis of the following comments and suggestions. Authors are suggested to pay full attention to all of them in further improving the quality of your paper.

 

Detailed comments and suggestions:

1. The motivation of the paper could be enhanced. Why are the developed detection methods used for rail wheel rolling surface damages? What are the research gaps? How can you fill them? Compare the existing models in the literature and why you think your model is merit in the literature? Please work on improving the clarity of your paper.

2. Based on the above suggestions, I would suggest the authors to add some reference from the last research. There is many existing research on rail wheel rolling surface damage detection methods. Some closely related ones are suggested here: Rail wheel tread defect detection using improved YOLOv3; Offline and Online Measurement of the Geometries of Train Wheelsets: A Review.

3. The comparison analysis and in-depth discussions are presented in this paper. Please enhance them to demonstrate the reliability of your advocated model and its application. How to verify the effectiveness of the developed method for quality and life.

4. In particular, the future applications of the paper might be included in the conclusion section.

5. The conclusion should be improved to summarize clearly the main contributions of the paper and future research efforts. It will increase the impact of the paper if the authors try to indicate this explicitly in the manuscript. Critical limitations in the proposed framework should be offered. Extensions and applications of the proposal in other fields could be exemplified in the Conclusion section. 

6. Language should be further improved. Please carefully revise and improve it. 

7. The layout of the paper should be improved.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We attach the authors' explanations about the corrections made to the article in a separate file.

Thank you for your attention to our article.

 

On behalf of the collective of authors,

Gediminas Vaičiūnas

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The Authors have addressed all the comments. Although I am not agree with some of replies, it should be stated that this work at its present condition can be of interest for scientists and practitioners who deals with safety of rolling stock running gear. If someone of prospective readers would have any questions concerning this research, it is always possible to contact the authors or start the discussion in press.

Reviewer 3 Report

All the comments have been responsed. I suggest to accept it.