Passive control of offshore jacket platforms

The wave-induced dynamic force is one of the most important excitations to be dealt with in the design of offshore structures. In order to perform a reliable design of an offshore structure, it is important to obtain an exact evaluation of its dynamic response but also to examine the ways of reducing the response. This paper presents the response of offshore jacket platforms installed with energy dissipation devices such as viscoelastic, viscous and friction dampers under wave loading. The offshore jacket platforms are modeled as multi-degrees-of-freedom system provided with dampers at each floor location. The wave forces are modeled as per Morison's equation. The governing equations of motion of the jacket platform with dampers are derived and their solution in the frequency domain is presented. The uni-directional random wave loading is expressed by the Pierson-Muskowitz spectrum. The response of the jacket platform with viscoelastic, viscous and friction dampers is compared with the corresponding response without dampers in order to investigate the effectiveness of the passive control systems. It is observed that the additional dampers add substantial damping to structure and thus favorably control the response of platform structure. Among the various energy dissipation devices used for study, the viscoelastic dampers perform better in comparison to the other dampers. This is due to the fact that the added viscoelastic dampers contribute to increased viscous damping as well as lateral stiffness which reduces the response of the offshore jacket platforms significantly.