Vibration Control of Jacket Platforms with Magnetorheological Damper and Experimental Validation

Magnetorheological (MR) dampers have been proposed to control the vibration of offshore platforms in this paper. The semi-active control strategy based on fuzzy control algorithm was adopted to determine the optimal output control force based on the responses of jacket platforms. A typical jacket platform in Mexico Gulf was selected as the numerical example to investigate the effectiveness of the proposed control method. Furthermore, a model experiment was performed to validate the results of the numerical simulation. The experimental model of the jacket platform was designed based on dynamical similarity criterion by the scale of 1:50. Both of the numerical and experimental results show that the semi-active control system with the MR damper can reduce vibrations of jacket platforms effectively and at the same time the control effect is stable.