Abstract
Environmental impact loading can seriously damage marine structures; thus, it is desirable for structural components to simultaneously bear high force and dissipate dynamic energy. However, the damping properties of structural metals are very low. This paper proposes a structural damping approach via a specifically designed all-metal brace, in which a combination of an asymmetric column with a multistable equilibria (MEQ) mechanism creates a flag-shaped hysteretic loop with an initial modulus similar to that of the parent metal material. The mechanical behavior of the brace is predicted by finite element modeling (FEM). An analytical model is presented for explaining the hysteretic dissipation induced by multistable modes that are transformed through mixed boundary conditions; these hysteretic dissipation behaviors are validated by FEM. A parametric study conducted on the geometric properties illustrates the flexible design of the stiffness and damping configurations of the MEQ brace. The proposed brace effectively mitigates the impact response of a representative jacket platform within the elastic range in the simulation, which utilizes three-dimensional FEM combined with the user-defined material (UMAT) code in ABAQUS. A brace with the MEQ feature is an effective alternative for obtaining high structural stiffness and enhancing damping in marine engineering.
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