On Vibration and Noise Dissipation in Ship and FPSO Structures with Smart Systems

Ships and floating structure production systems are widely deployed for deep and ultradeep waters operation. Active vibration reduction and noise control in such structures can significantly improve their hydrodynamic performance and stability during navigation, exploration, and exploitation activities. One way to minimise or reduce the transmission of vibration in these moving offshore structures is to exploit the mechanism of interfacial slip in press fit joints or layered structural laminates in their internal hull configurations to dissipate vibration energy. In this paper, slip damping with heterogeneous sandwich composite viscoelastic beam-plate smart systems as a model for dissipation of vibration and active noise control mechanism in ship and floating structures is investigated. For this problem, a boundary value partial differential equation is formulated for the case of linear and nonlinear hydrodynamic wave loadings. In particular, the effect of pressure distribution variation at the interface of the layered smart system on the energy dissipation, logarithmic damping decrement, and spatial transfer function is analyzed and presented for design application and selection of appropriate stabilizers. 1. Introduction Ships and floating structures are widely employed in the course of deep and ultradeep waters navigation as well as oil and gas engineering operations, because of their high adaptability, relatively low construction cost, and good stability. With the renewed interest in off-shore oil and gas exploration, huge resources are being invested in the development of the structures. These structures (mostly ship shaped) are either purposely built or merely converted from existing tankers with good hull structural scantling design. One of the factors that influence the design of these structures is the environment in which they have to operate. Nevertheless, FPSOs have unique features and characteristics. One new innovation in the design of ships and floating structures employs the application of sandwich plate system (SPS) technology with built-in vibration and insulation mechanism, as illustrated in Figure 1. The structures are usually sited at specific locations and are subjected to dynamic loading that is quite different from those arising from unrestricted service conditions, Moan et al. [1]. Figure 1: Sandwich Plate System (SPS) technology. Source: Intelligent Engineering (IE), UK/Canada. In particular, such structures and systems are constantly under the influence of hydrodynamic forces that prevail in such locations. Within the context