Identification of Time Variations of Moving Loads Applied to Plates Resting on Viscoelastic Foundation Using a Meshfree Method

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In the above-referred manuscript, the authors introduced a general technique for identification of the time variations of moving loads applied to plate structures resting on viscoelastic foundation. Overall, the major contributions of this manuscript is to propose a general methodology with a firm base and to establish its reliability through numerical assessments and capturing the rich set of response behavior that plate structures resting on viscoelastic foundation demonstrate. Authors also conducted numerical examples to investigate time variations of moving load. After carefully reading, the reviewer recognized that the manuscript was well-written. However, a minor revision is required before the publication. Detailed comments are given below:

1.      Authors should mention documents or reasons supporting the theory of third order shear deformation (TSDT).  

2.      A brief introduction about Hamilton principle should be given before applying to derive equilibrium equation in equation (4).  

3.      Authors should give more details about benefits of using meshfree RPIM technique.

4.      In section 3, the author should explain more clearly about principle behind inverse analysis.   

5.      Authors conducted numerical investigations for the case of meshfree method and idenfication of time variation. The outcomes gained from this analysis should be included in the section of Conclusion.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript is well written and within the scope of the respected journal. I very much enjoyed reading this piece of work. However I have some concerns which must be addressed by the authors:

1.       What is the main motivation of suing RIPM meshfree approximation for this problem compared with other meshfree methods?

2.       More technical details of the meshfree approximation for the potential reader must be provided regarding the number of nodes in the cloud as well as integration points (if required) in each example.  What about the convergence rate of this approach?

3.       It is stated by the authors that : “It should be mentioned that this strategy can only be implemented in meshfree methods, where there is no connectivity between the nodal points, and therefore, any nodal point can freely move during the problem analysis”. I do agree on this with the authors. It might be a good idea that here the authors give references to some recent meshfree approaches especially PD ones which are nowadays being followed by many researches. This helps to broad the readership of this paper in future. You may cite: [Computers & Structures,Volume 83, Issues 17–18, June 2005, Pages 1526-1535], [Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering

Volume 391, 1 March 2022, 114544]  and [Engineering with Computers

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00366-022-01656-z]

Author Response

Please see the uploaded file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors addressed my comment. I would recommend it for publication.