Simplified Procedure for Rapidly Estimating Inelastic Responses of Numerous High-Rise Buildings with Reinforced Concrete Shear Walls

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper presents a simplified procedure for the seismic nonlinear response analysis of high-rise buildings with reinforced concrete shear walls. The procedure is mainly based on the well-known uncoupled modal response history analysis with the implementation of a coupled shear-flexural cantilever beam model. As compared to the FEM-based analysis results of four buildings, the proposed procedure shows a good agreement with a reasonable computational time.

The paper is well-written and structured; however, it seems to be long, and some sections, which are re-called from the references, for example, the UMRHA procedure, may be shortened or ignored.

In addition, the parameter alpha is estimated from the information provided by the four buildings. It's recommended that this parameter need to estimate from adequate data for the buildings.

In a conclusion, this paper can be recommended for publication with a minor revision.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors compared simplified approach for predicting nonlinear dynamic analyses of buildings and proposed modal hysteretic model approach. The topic is interesting but there are several comments to be resolved before it can be published to Buildings.

[Section 5] Which software did you use to develop hysteretic model? Please elaborate.

[Section 5] Is the modal hysteretic model work as a part of single-degree-of-freedom system? I think this should be clearly stated in the section (or provide figures, may be?).

[Section 5] How will the load-displacement path of your modal hysteretic model be drawn after the displacement demand exceeds point C?

[Section 6 and 7] The authors claim that the computational cost can be reduced. I also agree with this statement. However, in my opinion, it would have been better to show figures showing how much computational cost reduction have been achieved along with those written in the last paragraph of Section 6.

[Section 7] Although the proposed approach (modal hysteretic model) can be simpler than past approaches without loosing significant accuracy,

[Section 7] I have some doubt on the authors statement that the proposed method can be used for seismic design of high-rise buildings since the proposed approach is validated against some few cases.

The authors compared the result obtained from CSFCBM and modal hysteretic model, where the latter is based on the former and the former is a simplified representation of a more complicated building model. I'm not sure if your boundary for high-rise building properties are within those of the original research for CSFCBM (Khan and Sbarounis [10]

). If it is not, then the accuracy of CSFCBM should also be verified. I think it would have been much better to compare simulation result of more sophisticated and more realistic high-rise building model and the simplified models (CSFCBM and modal hysteretic model), which is more intuitive and makes more sense.

Is it possible to build modal hysteretic model without having to build and simulate CSFCBM?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Paper titled on “Simplified procedure for rapidly estimating inelastic responses of numerous high-rise buildings with reinforced concrete shear walls” is good paper and under the scope of the journal. However, authors required to consider the below feedback to improve the paper before the acceptance.

1-      Abstract:

Line 8-11: “Nonlinear response history analysis (NLRHA) is considered the most accurate procedure  for evaluating the seismic performance of high-rise buildings. However, it requires considerable expertise and a significant amount of analysis time, making it inappropriate for evaluating numerous high-rise buildings; for example, estimating the seismic losses of a city for an earthquake scenario”. Please re-write to be shorter and significant.

-          Line 24-26: “ The results indicate that the proposed procedure provides reason ably accurate demand estimations for all case study buildings with significantly less analysis time  than that required by NLRHA”. Authors must add the data / % of the results to the show the significance of the proposed. And must add what is the future of this study and how it can help or developed. This must be sound of critical analysis.

2-      Introduction: this section is very important for research paper. However, this section needs improvement. First line 35-75 : “ The  safety and serviceability of these buildings against……. in such cases, and reasonable accuracy can be acceptable”. What is this ?!! No references ??? authors need to improve it and add the updated references.

And before authors introduce the research’s aim, novelty and research gap must be introduced. This is not available in this paper. Therefore, must first discuss the previous finding and show the research gap. Novelty is not addressed clearly?!

3-      Results :

Line 504-506: “ The comparisons in Figures 5 and 6 indicate that CSFCBM can provide reasonably  accurate estimates of story shear and overturning moment from the base to the top of the  case study buildings in all three transverse modes”. Authors required to  add strong more argument in redated this results. And compare it with precious finding that stated in the introduction.

-          Line 550: “Table 4 summarizes the structural indexes”, authors need to discuss how these results show development with proposed design?

-          Each section of results missed the strong discussion and authors just report his data??? This must improve following the requirement of argument in line with the previous findings.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I admire the authors' effort to reply all the comments given by the Reviewer.

The replies were reasonable and comprehensible as the reviewers provided point-to-point indication of location of revision in their manuscript.

I accept the paper to be published in Buildings.

Reviewer 3 Report

Accepted in the current version.