Parametric Study of Lateral Load on Helical Pipe Piles in Clay

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In the present article, the authors have performed a parametric study of lateral load on helical pipe piles in clay. The interaction of the soil with steel and helical pipe pile has been analyzed under wind loading using FEM computational software. Please find below review comments which may help the authors to improve the quality of the manuscript.

1.     The clarity of Figure 1 is to be improved.

2.     The caption of Figure 1 is to be changed and may be written as “ Sectional view of the helical pipe pile with an enlarged view highlighting the diameter, thickness of the pile and helix pitch”.

3.     Which soil model has been selected for numerical analysis and why? Suggest discussion.

4.     What will happen if the soil becomes plastic?

5.     What coefficient of friction is selected between the soil and the pile?

6.     As the computational analysis is an important part of the study, it is recommended to explain all the minor details of the analysis which may help the young researchers to follow your research.

7.     How the mesh seeding has been performed? Details of flip bias ratio etc. to be added for clarity.

8.     Please incorporate a few pictures of Abaqus's modeling, meshing, and output results.

9.     Which version of computational has been utilized for the present numerical analysis?

10.  Mention details of mesh size, the shape of the finite element, number of elements employed, etc. in the research article as this is the important part of the study.

11.  What are the boundary conditions applied in the present numerical analysis for defined loading conditions?

12.  Was a sensitivity analysis performed to confirm that model convergence was achieved with the selected mesh size?

13.  Are the results from the numerical analysis validated? It is suggested to validate the results with the previously published research.

14.  Re-check Figure No. in Line No. 415.

Moderate editing of English language is required.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper deals with the horizontal bearing capacity of the helical pipe piles, while the studies on helical pipe piles carried out in the past have mainly focused on the compression loading condition in different types of soil. Since studies on horizontal bearing capacity of the helical pipe piles are extremely lacking in the literature, this paper is undoubtedly interesting from a scientific point of view. However, the quality of the presentation can be improved.

Line 18

“young’s modulus”

Change to Young’s modulus, throughout the text.

Line 148

“… according to the survey. As summarized in Table 1.”

It is likely “… according to the survey, as summarized in Table 1.”.

Figure 1

Provide a caption for the figure.

Lines 190-191

“… the soil boundary dimension to be considered will be 20 times of target structure at least in terms of x, y and z direction.”

A figure might be helpful here. Overall, the article suffers from the lack of some images of the FEM model.

Section 3

This section is a bit repetitive. Authors should try to make the text more compact and more incisive.

Lines 197-199

“the lateral displacement versus corresponding loads of steel pipe pile in soil with different young’s modulus is provided in Figure 2”

Specify the point at which the displacement is calculated, preferably by indicating it in a figure.

Moderate editing of English language required.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript entitled “Parametric Study of Lateral Load on Helical Pipe Pile in Clay” presents the research related to the install photovoltaic panels on shallow pile foundations. The construction of FV farms is becoming more and more common, but the load from the panels on the ground is relatively small and usually does not pose significant geotechnical problems. The exceptions are foundations on slopes, especially artificial slopes and landfills. Then the analyzed foundation method may require more advanced analyses.
General comments:
•    In my opinion the Abstract should be revised and modified. It should be indicated in which cases the analyzes may be useful.
•    Sentence: "It is found that the piles capacity increases with the soil strength and young’s modulus, but the capacity increment rate reacts differently" - it doesn't bring anything new, that's an obvious statement.
•    It is not clear what is the hypothesis of performed study.
•    The novelty and limitations of the performed research should be delineated.
•    The literature review seems to be limited. I suggest authors to elaborate more on the topic and refer to many more scientific research related to the issue of FV panel foundations.
•    The literature review should be based on the most recent scientific data. Now, more than 50% of cited references are old. Please improve that.
•    How important is the choice of calculation method? What type and how large loads are taken into account in the calculations, and what is their variability and what may result from it?
•    The application of statistical methods is not well explained. What more sophisticated methods can be used for parameters verification?
•     The authors should enhance the discussion and highlight the importance of performed study in terms of the sustainability.
•    The title indicates that the study will be comprehensive, but after reading the text, the reader may have impression that is still lack of mentioned comprehensiveness, especially in regards to the literature review and the discussion on the outcomes.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have incorporated the majority of the review comments, The article may be accepted. 

It can be improved.

Reviewer 2 Report

The Authors addressed all comments.

Moderate editing of English language required.

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors introduced significant additions to the suggestions from the review, especially in terms of justifying the adopted design solutions and calculations of foundations on piles. Additional additions may be made, including references to other solutions and current literature cited. However, the article may also be accepted for publication in its present form. Good luck.