Effect of Stress Ratio and Loading Inclination on the Fatigue Life of Carbon-Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Composites: Multiscale Analysis Approach

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The present work proposes an integrated meso-scale modeling and macro-scale experimental investigation as promising tools to predict the mechanical behavior and fatigue performances of fiber reinforced polymer composites. The work is well written and organized, and the concluding remarks are well supported by the large numerical predictions and experimental results with a great level of accuracy. The authors are only invited to check for few isolated typos within the text, before accepting definitely the work for publication in this journal. 

Minor text editing.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you very much for your valuable remarks. The manuscript was strictly revised according to your comments.

Please find detailed comments to your remarks:

This paper presents the integration of meso-scale modelling and macro-scale experimentation has emerged as a promising approach for understanding and predicting the mechanical behavior and fatigue performance of fiber reinforced polymer composites. However, the authors are obliged to sort this out before final acceptance.

 

Comment 1: The present work proposes an integrated meso-scale modeling and macro-scale experimental investigation as promising tools to predict the mechanical behavior and fatigue performances of fiber reinforced polymer composites. The work is well written and organized, and the concluding remarks are well supported by the large numerical predictions and experimental results with a great level of accuracy. The authors are only invited to check for few isolated typos within the text, before accepting definitely the work for publication in this journal.

Revision/Explanation: Thank you for recommending the manuscript for possible publication in this esteemed journal. All typos have been checked thoroughly and corrected accordingly.

Comment 2: Minor text editing.

Revision/Explanation: The manuscript is thoroughly checked for any possible text errors and corrected as far as possible.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

1. Introduction: this part is very interesting indeed but unfortunately it mixed up theoretical background and state of the art but misses out on actually explaining where the contribution of the current paper is to be expected. I would suggest to restructure the introduction, clearly separating theory and state of the art, while providing sufficient information and description of the current work's contribution. 

2. Materials and Methods: the first paragraph of this section has to be deleted. 

3. Materials and Methods: the methods and the reasoning behind their use in the flowchart in Fig. 1 should be detailed better. I. e. why and how the Mod Gerber criteria? It is unclear why this was chosen and how it was applied for the selected material. 

4. Multi-scale fatigue performance: it would be better if this section would be titled "Methods" and then 3.1 Multi scale ...., 3.1.1. Macro scale and so on. As far as can be read, in the current manuscript version, it is rather a subsection of the Materials and Methods section rather than a stand-alone section. Or just rename the previous section 2. Please refine. 

5. Please perform a thorough grammar check. There are several typos and more wrong cases, verbs or prepositions, etc. 

6. Results and Discussion: Although the results are promising, this section does not provide any discussion of the results and no reference and placing in context with the literature whatsoever. Please update and discuss the results to a deep extent. 

 

Good luck! 

Language is good, just some minor checks are required throughout the entire manuscript, as there are several grammar errors or typos. 

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you very much for your valuable remarks. The manuscript was strictly revised according to your comments.

Please find detailed comments to your remarks:

Comment 1: Introduction: this part is very interesting indeed but unfortunately it mixed up theoretical background and state of the art but misses out on actually explaining where the contribution of the current paper is to be expected. I would suggest to restructure the introduction, clearly separating theory and state of the art, while providing sufficient information and description of the current work's contribution.

Revision/Explanation: Thanks for this important suggestion. As per the suggestion, the introduction section has been restructured.

Comment 2: Materials and Methods: the first paragraph of this section has to be deleted.

Revision/Explanation: As suggested, the first paragraph of “Materials and Methods” has been deleted from the manuscript.

Comment 3: Materials and Methods: the methods and the reasoning behind their use in the flowchart in Fig. 1 should be detailed better. I. e. why and how the Mod Gerber criteria? It is unclear why this was chosen and how it was applied for the selected material.

Revision/Explanation:  Thanks for the suggestion. The reasoning behind the use of Modified Gerber criteria has been incorporated with supporting references in the revised manuscript.

Comment 4: Multi-scale fatigue performance: it would be better if this section would be titled "Methods" and then 3.1 Multi scale ...., 3.1.1. Macro scale and so on. As far as can be read, in the current manuscript version, it is rather a subsection of the Materials and Methods section rather than a stand-alone section. Or just rename the previous section 2. Please refine.

Revision/Explanation:  This has been modified in the revised manuscript, as suggested.

 

Comment 5: Please perform a thorough grammar check. There are several typos and more wrong cases, verbs or prepositions, etc.

Revision/Explanation: The manuscript is thoroughly checked against any possible grammatical errors. The correction has been also performed using the Grammarly package to remove grammatical errors as much as possible.

Comment 6: Results and Discussion: Although the results are promising, this section does not provide any discussion of the results and no reference and placing in context with the literature whatsoever. Please update and discuss the results to a deep extent.

Revision/Explanation: Thanks for the suggestion. The result and discussion section has been augmented with a detailed discussion of the obtained results. The physical significance of the obtained results are discussed in detail for better understating from a reader's point of view.

Comment 7: Language is good, just some minor checks are required throughout the entire manuscript, as there are several grammar errors or typos.

Revision/Explanation:  The manuscript is thoroughly checked against any possible grammatical and typo errors.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

I enjoyed reading this article, especially its very engineering and practical content. The language and style are fine, though there are many remnants of instructions from the template. The research problem itself is clear, although one would expect some emphasis on new aspects in the last paragraph of the introduction.

In my opinion, the review of the literature is very modest, therefore the introduction is not complete and partially superficial. I'm sure the authors could put in some effort and search the literature to find similar ideas and address them in the introduction. In particular, in my opinion, the work lacks a wider review on homogenization methods. My suggestion is to include some of works by Aleksander Marek on homogenization (eg. researchgate.net/publication/ 263326721 or 332862120). Also recent works by Natalia Staszak, M. Biancolini, Damian Mrówczyński, N. Buannic, Tomasz Gajewski or Jakub Grabski might be interesting for the Authors.

Major remarks:

1) main findings and novelty need to be strongly emphasized

2) the introduction written as one paragraph is really unusual. It need to be extended with both suggested and other articles which deals with the homogenization problems. 

Minor remark:

1) lines 156-162 are to be deleted

2) line 228 - "Bulleted lists look like this: Carbon fiber composites..." - should it be like this?

3) line 267 - "It is a simplified criterion that assumes linear elasticity and is commonly used for isotropic materials." - is it ??

4) Figure 3 - there are multiplications (e.g. 10^3) and others not correctly placed on the Figure

5) fonts used in all Figs should have same size as in main text.

6) the work is quite messy - it should be tidied up

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you very much for your valuable remarks. The manuscript was strictly revised according to your comments.

Please find detailed comments to your remarks:

Comment 1: I enjoyed reading this article, especially its very engineering and practical content. The language and style are fine, though there are many remnants of instructions from the template. The research problem itself is clear, although one would expect some emphasis on new aspects in the last paragraph of the introduction.

 

In my opinion, the review of the literature is very modest, therefore the introduction is not complete and partially superficial. I'm sure the authors could put in some effort and search the literature to find similar ideas and address them in the introduction. In particular, in my opinion, the work lacks a wider review on homogenization methods. My suggestion is to include some of works by Aleksander Marek on homogenization (eg. researchgate.net/publication/ 263326721 or 332862120). Also recent works by Natalia Staszak, M. Biancolini, Damian Mrówczyński, N. Buannic, Tomasz Gajewski or Jakub Grabski might be interesting for the Authors.

Revision/Explanation:  Thanks for the suggestion. The introduction section is enriched with a detailed discussion of suggested literature.

Comment 2: Main findings and novelty need to be strongly emphasized the introduction written as one paragraph is really unusual. It need to be extended with both suggested and other articles which deals with the homogenization problems.

Revision/Explanation: The introduction section is restructured and enriched with a discussion of the relevant literature, as suggested. Further, the novelty of the presented manuscript is supported by the discussion of the presented literature review in the introduction section.

Comment 3: lines 156-162 are to be deleted

Revision/Explanation:  As suggested, the lines are deleted.

Comment 4: line 228 - "Bulleted lists look like this: Carbon fiber composites..." - should it be like this?

Revision/Explanation:  It has been corrected in the manuscript.

Comment 5: line 267 - "It is a simplified criterion that assumes linear elasticity and is commonly used for isotropic materials." - is it ??

Revision/Explanation:  Tsai-Hill criterion has been widely used as a failure criterion to predict the failure of composite materials, particularly those fabricated from unidirectional fiber-reinforced polymers. The mentioned line has been removed from the revised manuscript.

Comment 6: Figure 3 - there are multiplications (e.g. 10^3) and others not correctly placed on the Figure.

Revision/Explanation:  Figure 3 has been corrected and replaced in the manuscript.

Comment 7: fonts used in all Figs should have same size as in main text.

Revision/Explanation: The figures and corresponding captions are updated in the revised manuscript.

Comment 8: the work is quite messy - it should be tidied up.

Revision/Explanation:  The manuscript is revised and restructured for a better understanding of the reader’s points of view.

References

1. Marek, A.; Garbowski, T. Homogenization of Sandwich Panels. Comput. Assist. Methods Eng. Sci. 2015, 22, 39–50.
2. Buannic, N.; Cartraud, P.; Quesnel, T. Homogenization of Corrugated Core Sandwich Panels. Compos. Struct. 2003, 59, 299–312, doi:10.1016/S0263-8223(02)00246-5.
3. Garbowski, T.; Gajewski, T. Determination of Transverse Shear Stiffness of Sandwich Panels with a Corrugated Core by Numerical Homogenization. Materials (Basel). 2021, 14, 1–14, doi:10.3390/ma14081976.
4. Staszak, N.; Gajewski, T.; Garbowski, T. Shell-to-Beam Numerical Homogenization of 3D Thin-Walled Perforated Beams. Materials (Basel). 2022, 15, 1–15, doi:10.3390/ma15051827.
5. Garbowski, T.; Marek, A. Homogenization of Corrugated Boards through Inverse Analysis. OPT-i 2014 - 1st Int. Conf. Eng. Appl. Sci. Optim. Proc. 2014, 1751–1766.
6. Mrówczyński, D.; Knitter‐piątkowska, A.; Garbowski, T. Non‐Local Sensitivity Analysis and Numerical Homogenization in Optimal Design of Single‐Wall Corrugated Board Packaging. Materials (Basel). 2022, 15, doi:10.3390/ma15030720.
7. Bernasconi, A.; Davoli, P.; Basile, A.; Filippi, A. Effect of Fibre Orientation on the Fatigue Behaviour of a Short Glass Fibre Reinforced Polyamide-6. Int. J. Fatigue 2007, 29, 199–208, doi:10.1016/j.ijfatigue.2006.04.001.
8. De Monte, M.; Moosbrugger, E.; Quaresimin, M. Influence of Temperature and Thickness on the Off-Axis Behaviour of Short Glass Fibre Reinforced Polyamide 6.6 - Cyclic Loading. Compos. Part A Appl. Sci. Manuf. 2010, 41, 1368–1379, doi:10.1016/j.compositesa.2010.02.004.
9. Zhang, J.; Li, V.C. Effect of Inclination Angle on Fiber Rupture Load in Fiber Reinforced Cementitious Composites. Compos. Sci. Technol. 2002, 62, 775–781, doi:10.1016/S0266-3538(02)00045-3.

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for addressing all the raised points and especially for amending the discussion of the results. 

Good luck with the paper! 

 

Reviewer 3 Report

In myt opinion article has been significantly improved, therefore I suggest to accept it in present form.