Earthquake response of tension‐leg‐platforms in steady currents

Abstract

AbstractDynamic response of tethers of tension‐leg‐platforms to current and horizontal earthquake excitations is investigated. The static deflected shape of tether under a steady current is firstly identified. Next dynamic analysis for earthquake input is carried out for this deflected tether. The fluid loading due to surrounding water is included in the analysis as an added mass term and a hydrodynamic damping term. The tether is discretized by lumping masses at selected nodes. The platform is represented by a mass at the top end of the tether. The effect of pretension in the tether is taken into account in the form of a geometric stiffness term. At each node three degrees of freedom corresponding to surge, heave and pitch motion are considered. As the vibration modes and hence the responses are likely to be affected by the foundation characteristics, the study is extended to include the dynamic soil–structure interaction. The dynamic equations of motion for the tether–pile–soil system are derived using the substructure method. The natural frequencies and the vibration mode shapes of the total system are determined by eigenvalue analysis. The input ground acceleration is represented by Tajimi–Kanai's power spectrum for stationary conditions. The response analysis is carried out using the frequency‐domain random‐vibration approach. The coupled axial and lateral responses are evaluated for horizontal ground excitations. Numerical results indicate that the horizontal displacements of the tether increase with the input ground acceleration, but are nearly equal for all the cases of current velocities considered in the study; the vertical displacements however increase rapidly with the increase in current velocity. For the model considered in the present study, the responses are reduced when soil–structure interaction is included in the analysis.