Improved Evidence Fusion Theory for the Safety Assessment of Prestressed Concrete Bridges

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper presents an application of the evidence theory to the safety condition assessment of prestressed concrete bridges. The research utilizes the improved Dempster-Shafer evidence theory to deal with the uncertainty during the assessment process. The paper is applied to a case study and the results are discussed. Overall, the research is interesting and may be considered within the scope of the journal. Nevertheless, the paper needs clarification on the following aspects according to the comments to help improve the quality of the manuscript.

1.      L.68-70. “…when there is a high degree of conflicting evidence within the evidence, the fusion law of D-S evidence theory has significant disadvantages in dealing with such conflicting data.” Specify the type of conflicting evidences references referred here.

2.      L.72-73. “In addition, the validity of D-S theory depends heavily on the construction of the basic probability assignments (BPAs).” What is the basic probability distribution is not explained in the article.

3.      L.106-107. “…the initial BPAs required for evidence fusion were constructed by combining UAHP and,”. This sentence is not completely written.

4.      Section “Introduction”. Some of the references cited in the article are too old, and it is recommended to replace them with some newer references.

5.      L.324-325. “The effective prestressing index is expressed and measured as a percentage change in the concrete structure design.” This is confusing, and it should be clearer how effective prestressing index is determined.

6.      Section “Project Overview”. Figures of the bridge for case study are recommended.

7.      Section “Discussion”. The data in the discussion section are all presented in tables. It is recommended to enrich the presentation form of the data. Figures could be considered to better present the performance differences between different fusion methods.

Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

                        The concept of your study is commendable; however, the manuscript lacks sufficient detail to demonstrate its suitability for publication in a journal. Significant revisions are necessary throughout the document. Specifically, the introduction is notably brief. I recommend expanding it by approximately 300 words, ensuring to include relevant citations. Additionally, the quality of English across various sections of the article needs enhancement.

A major area of concern is the absence of data analysis, which is a critical component for any scholarly article. It is essential to incorporate graphs and discuss your findings in detail, supported by appropriate citations. Without these revisions, the likelihood of acceptance by a journal is minimal.

moderate quality and revisions required 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

In this paper, a modified evidence fusion theory which improved the conventional dempster shafer fusion method to reduce assessment inaccuracies by the data uncertainty. The new evaluating method can be employed to assess the safety of prestressed concrete bridges. The effectiveness and practicality of the modified method were verified by a case study on prestressed concrete bridges. This article was novel and bizarre. Although the language was fluent and the structure was well organized, several important aspects still needs supplement.

(1)   The inspecting reports and load testing reports should be provided, which can help to grasp the bridge status comprehensively.

(2)   The design detail including bridge type, span constitution, transverse distribution, section type, prestressing tendons, etc. should be supplemented.

(3)   What was the objective criterion to check the accuracy of the proposed method? Please address.

(4)   How did the authors get the measured values in Table3?

(5)   Table 3. D6 indicated effective prestressing. When D6 was equal to 0.15 in Table 5, does it infer that the effective prestressing was 15% of the original prestressing? Please clarify it.

(6)   If the D6 equals to 0.15 means the prestressing lost, how the authors measure the prestressing lost in an existed prestressed concrete beams. Please explicitly expatiate it.

(7)Assessing the superstructure and substructure respectively by the proposed method is suggested.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Accept

Moderate level 

Author Response

Thanks for your valuable comments. We tried our best to improve manuscript languages. These changes will not influence the content and framework of the paper. And here we did not list the changes but marked in red in revised paper. We appreciate for your warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with approval. Two revised manuscripts have been uploaded: one version with changes highlighted in red; another version without any marks.