Structural design with highly flowable Fibre Reinforced Concrete has to duly take into account the preferential alignment of fibers, which can be governed through the rheological properties of the fluid mixture and the casting process and by the geometry of the structure. The possibility of predicting the fiber alignment, by tailoring the casting process, and of non-destructively monitoring it, can foster more efficient structural applications and design approaches. Focusing on UHPFRC slabs with pre-arranged casting defects, the flowinduced alignment of the fibers has been predicted by means of a suitable CFD modelling approach and hence monitored via a non-destructive method based on magnetic inductance properties of the fiber reinforced composite. The comparison between the assessed data on the fibre orientation and the crack patterns as visualized by image analysis supports the effectiveness of casting flow modelling and non-destructive fiber dispersion monitoring in supporting the structural design of elements made with highly flowable fiber reinforced cementitious composites.
Response to the reviewers of the manuscript ENGSTRUCT D-16-00912Structural elements made with highly flowable UHPFRC:can Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and non-destructive survey of fiber dispersion complement structural design in predicting failure modes?
submitted for publication to Engineering StructuresThe authors thank the reviewers for the time they have dedicated to read their manuscript and for the insightful comments they have made and for the overall evaluation of the manuscript.The authors have taken in high consideration all the comments, mainly made by the second reviewers, and have addressed them in the revised version of the manuscript, which is now resubmitted.In detail:RESPONSE TO REVIEWER 1 -The authors agree that citing "structural design" in the title may rise some expectations in the reader which the paper does not fully address. In view of this the tile has been modified as follows
Structural elements made with highly flowable UHPFRC: correlating Computational FluidDynamics (CFD) predictions and non-destructive survey of fiber dispersion with failure modes? (see also response to 1st general remark of reviewer 2) -The thickness of the slab (30 mm) has been declared -Reference [93] (which has now become reference [94]) contains details about the test set-up and the mechanical test results with elaboration of the digital image correlation measurements of the cracks, which in this paper are taken as reference and simply compared with CFD predictions and ND fiber dispersion monitoring. -The citation by Svec has been added. As for the other reference cited by the reviewer, the authors are doubtful whether to cite or not since it is likely an internal publication which is not indexed nor widely available. -With reference to the slab with the defect at 1/3 of the side it is not true that the defect does not affect the crack pattern; even in the major crack does not develop along the casting defect line, the...