Wave flume tests of a semi-submersible platform controlled by a novel rotational inertia damper

Abstract Semi-submersible platforms (SSPs) may subject to excessive wave-induced vibrations, which should be effectively suppressed. In the past decades, some vibration control methods have been proposed and developed, such as the fixed heave plate (FHP) and tuned heave plate (THP). Recently, the authors proposed using inerter-based control device, i.e. rotational inertia dampers (RIDs), to control the vibrations of SSPs, and the control effectiveness has been demonstrated through analytical studies. To further investigate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method, wave flume tests are conducted and reported in the present study. In particular, a 1:70 scaled SSP model was manufactured, and the vibration characteristics of the platform were determined firstly through free vibration tests. After that, the bare and RID equipped SSPs were tested under the regular and irregular waves. For comparison, the SSP equipped with the commonly used FHP was also tested. The experimental results demonstrate that both the RID and FHP systems are effective in reducing the heave motion of SSP. However, compared to the FHP, the RID system showed a much better control performance with a very small physical mass. The wave flume tests demonstrated the superior vibration control performances of RID on SSP.

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