Hardware Reliability Analysis of a Coal Mine Gas Monitoring System Based on Fuzzy-FTA

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1. Line 31: Authors wrote „At present, researchers are adopting some new theories: for example, analytic hier- 34 archy process, cloud model evaluation method, extension theory, quantitative improvement HAZOP and other methods are applied to the reliability analysis of gas monitoring”. References should be added (not only from China).
2. Lines 49-52. The sentence is incomprehensible and should be corrected.
3. In Figure 3, delate OR gates (between B1-B4 and B5).
4. Why the fuzzy triangular numbers were used? More explanations should be added.
5. More explanation should be included concerning Tables 2 and 3. Paragraph 3.4.1. can be difficult to understand for readers not familiar with the fuzzy approach.
6. I suggest improving the English before publishing it. 
7. Proposed questionnaire should be shown in the manuscripte.
8. What kind of reliability data (generic data and/or plant-specific data) were used?
9. Some previous researchers applied the fuzzy numbers and are not acknowledged within the paper. I suggest the authors include some references like e.g. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jlp.2018.10.003, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psep.2014.02.005 
10. The titles of references have a different format, the title of the article is written in capital letters at the beginning of words, others only in lower case. Also, the standardized format of presentation in the journal's name. Because names have written in a different format, one is not abbreviated, others are not.

Author Response

Dear reviwer:

Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions for my article. I made the following changes to the article according to each of your suggestions:

1. at Line 31: I added three new references, one is about analytic hierarchy process, one is about extension theory, the other is about quantitative improvement HAZOP.
2. I amended the sentence in lines 49-52.
3. I added the explanation of B1-B5 in lines 276-2
4. I added More explanations about fuzzy triangular numbers in lines 160-171.
5. The old Tables 2 and 3 has been cancelled and its content is reflected in the notes of the expert questionnaire tables.
6. Because English is not my native language, when the paper passes the review, I will seek MDPI's English editing service.
7. I added the expert questionnaire tables in new Table 2.
8. My reliability data came from personal experience of 10 experts and and actual data on site.
9. I have read the articles recommended by you and feel that it is very meaningful to my thesis, and I have taken these articles as new references.
10. I have revised the references according to the format required by the journal and added 8 cited articles.
11. Based on the opinions of other reviewers, I made other modifications and improvements to the paper.

 

Kind regards,

Jingtian XU

2021.10.27

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript reports an assessment of the use of fuzzy fault tree analysis to assess the probabilities of hardware failure in coal mine gas monitoring systems. This paper builds upon previous research on use of fuzzy FTA to assess hazards in coal mines. The paper is generally clearly written and the analysis has some potential to be useful in risk assessment of monitoring systems in coal mines. The approach could be tested and verified further in future using a larger number of specialist experts across multiple coal mines. There are some aspects of the manuscript that require more work, notably the reference list is inadequate and misses some key recent references. More specific details are given below.

1. Figure 1. Some aspects of this flow diagram are not completely clear. Clarify what you mean by 'Familiar with System'. What are the criteria for making an assessment of whether the fault tree is correct or not? It is also not clear what the 'collect materials' step entails.
2. Page 9 lines 291-292 "In general, the . . . of failure occurrence." It is not clear what you are meaning by "one level lower" in this context. Clarify this in the manuscript.
3. Page 10 lines 317-318 ". . . which shows that . . . better reliability performance." Better than what? To what are you comparing reliability?
4. Page 11 line 353 ". . . insufficient sense of responsibility, insufficient sense of responsibility . . ." Delete repeated text.
5. Page 11 lines 356-357 "The quantitative analysis . . . approximately 1.1% . . ." This statement appears to be at odds with Table 4 where the top event probability intervals are centred on about 0.00011 which equates to 0.011% not 1.1%. It also appears to be at odds with the statement in lines 376-377 where the top event probability interval is given. Please clarify.
6. Page 11 lines 363-364 "Occurrence, thereby reducing mine gas outburst accidents." This sentence does not make sense as worded and needs to be rewritten.
7. Page 11 line 394 "The method has greater advantages in flexibility and adaptability." In comparison to which other methods or approaches?
8. The reference list is deficient. There are a number of recent topical references not included, e.g. Shi et al. Fuzzy fault tree analysis for gas explosion of coal mining and heading faces in underground coal mines. Advances in Mechanical Engineering 2018. Shi et al. International Journal of Mining Science and Technology 2018 28:6 991-998. Wang et al. A Novel Method of Fuzzy Fault Tree Analysis Combined with VB Program to Identify and Assess the Risk of Coal Dust Explosions. PLOS One 2017.

Author Response

Dear reviwer:

Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions for my article. I made the following changes to the article according to each of your suggestions:

1. I added a lot of content to explain the fault tree and its establishment processin lines 89-112.
2. Paragraph 3.4.1. can be difficult to understand for readers not familiar with the fuzzy approach. I have rewritten this section in lines 275-
3. I have revised the original sentence to: “which shows that the system has better reliability performance than traditional FTA.”
4. I have deleted the repeated sentence.
5. Yes, you are right, that value should be 0.011% not 1.1%.
6. I have revised the original sentence to: “thereby reducing the failure of the coal mine gas monitoring system as much as possible, reducing mine gas outburst accidents.”
7. I have revised the original sentence to: “which shows that the system has better reliability performance than traditional FTA.”
8. I have read the articles recommended by you and feel that it is very meaningful to my thesis, and I have taken these articles as new And I also have revised the references according to the format required by the journal and added 8 cited articles.
9. Based on the opinions of other reviewers, I made other modifications and improvements to the paper.

 

Kind regards,

Jingtian XU

2021.10.27

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The presented article 'Hardware Reliability Analysis of a Coal Mine Gas Monitoring System Based on Fuzzy-FTA' it is not prepared in accordance with the requirements of the journal. Mandatory parts: Materials and Methods and  Results are missing. The References and the way of citation are also not prepared in accordance with the requirements of the MDPI.

For this reason, I reject the manuscript and ask for it to be resubmitted after correcting the manuscript.

 

 

Author Response

Dear reviwer:

Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions for my article. I made the following changes to the article according to each of your suggestions:

1. I added more explanations about method of fuzzy-FTA in lines 89-112.
2. I added the expert questionnaire tables in new Table 2 to explain the source of the data.
3. I have revised the references according to the format required by the journal and added 8 cited articles.
4. Based on the opinions of other reviewers, I made other modifications and improvements to the paper.

 

Kind regards,

Jingtian XU

2021.10.27

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The Authors have effectively replayed all of the remarks, suggestions, and comments.

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have made adequate changes to the manuscript in response to my earlier review comments.