Tribological Behavior of Structural Steel with Different Surface Finishing and Treatments for a Novel Seismic Damper

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors investigate the important issue of the possibility of increasing the wear resistance of materials used to suppress seismic activity due to the dissipation of the energy of mechanical vibrations by converting it into the work of friction and wear. This topic is relevant because it is aimed at improving the safety of structures in seismically active regions of the planet.

 

1. The first section provides a literature review in general terms on the issue of increasing the wear resistance of metals. At the same time, there is also a focus on developing methods for increasing the wear resistance of materials for their use as systems for passive suppression of seismic activity due to energy dissipation in the process of performing the work of a thorn.

Mostly modern literature is used, but there are few articles published over the past 5 years (4 articles and 1 book).

Based on the literature review, the purpose of the work is formulated. Which is generally relevant for this area of research.

2. The second section provides a very detailed description of the research methods and materials used. The methods are chosen adequately and correspond to those generally accepted in this field of research.

3. The third section presents the main results. The description of the results is quite detailed. The text also contains a discussion of the findings. Not all illustrations are well done.

4. The fourth section contains conclusions that need to be revised.

 

Notes:

1. There are no confidence intervals in Figures 10 and 11. Their value can significantly affect the interpretation of the results.

2. The inscriptions in Figures 3 and the scale markers (50 µm) should be enlarged. They are hard to read.

3. Conclusions should be rewritten. In their current form, they are more reminiscent of a discussion of the results obtained.

As a recommendation, we can offer the authors to transfer part of the text from the conclusions to the discussion of the results. And the conclusions themselves should be presented in the format of a brief summary with specific quantitative indicators.

4. When discussing the results, the authors do not compare the obtained new information with known works in this field.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a well-organized manuscript addressing the tribological behavior of structural steel with different surface finishing and treatments. The work can provide information for use in actual conditions. Some suggestions are listed as follows for further improve the quality.

1) The hardness data in Figure 5 looks in a large variation, could you explain it? How many data points have you used for getting the averaging value?

2) Do you have any image showing the morphology of the wear tracks?

3) The conclusion part is too tedious. Please condense this part to make it more clear.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript deals with a tribological behavior of structural steel with different surface finishing and treatments. The authors propose a strategy that combines both on the steadiness of friction and processes costs. The manuscript needs to be little more detailed about the methodology to surface investigation. Nevertheless, the manuscript is well structured and can be published after some revisions. The reviewer enjoyed reading this paper.

 

1. I suggest adding "Nomenclature" (as list of symbols, list of abbreviations and subscripts and others) in the manuscript.

2. in the Materials and Methods section the authors state: “…with two different nominal roughness values, Ra = 1 μm and Ra = 2 μm named SP1 and SP2, respectively, were considered..”.

2.1. Please add information on the metrological tee about the measurement of these values - at what length of the profile, were any filters used, etc. ...

2.2. I suggest adding some information on surface topography parameters (in this section and in the Introduction). We can see nice surface scans at work and they beg for a deeper analysis using areal surface parameters. This should be addressed in the paper. See, for example, the following papers (not limited to).

- https://doi.org/10.3390/ma13173691 - about profile and areal surface parameters for fatigue fracture characterization;

- https://doi.org/10.3390/coatings12091331 - dealing with advances in measurement and data analysis of surfaces with functionalized coatings;

- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.measurement.2019.107347 - about surface topography analysis based on fatigue fractures obtained with bending of the 2017A-T4 alloy.

 

3. Conclusions

3.1. Please change the name of this section on Concluding remarks;

3.2. The practical usefulness of the results should be emphasized;

3.3. The main limitations of the present method must be identified and discussed in the end of this section.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors took into account the comments and made the necessary changes.