Active Control of Floating Structures

Abstract
All floating structures are subject to wave disturbances which vary in severity with the wind. It therefore seems natural to consider the possibility of active control of the motion of such structures to improve their dynamic behavior and hence their reliability. The feasibility of the active control of floating structures supported by open‐bottom chambers is presented. In order to accomplish the control the pressure of the air trapped beneath the chambers is adjusted. For ease of analysis and experiment, sea waves are assumed to be known and sinusoidal. Furthermore, only the heave motion is considered and the wave‐structure interaction is neglected in the analysis. Controls that completely eliminate the heave motion for a rigid platform are dealt with analytically and experimentally. The experiment performed indicated that the active control of structures significantly improved the response behavior.

This publication has 2 references indexed in Scilit: