Characteristics of Floating Arrays from Aligned to Staggered Patterns
Publication: Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 149, Issue 5
Abstract
In nature, staggered structures, such as knitted baskets and brick patterns in the structure of buildings, always exhibit the feature of structural reinforcement. Can floating arrays become more dynamically stationary if floating modules of an array are interconnected in a staggered pattern rather than in an aligned pattern? This work examined the dynamic characteristics of staggered floating arrays. A floating array with 12 identical semisubmersible modules in a configuration was used to study the effects of staggered structure on the dynamic characteristics of floating systems. A network modeling method considering the geometric effect of connectors was used to establish the analysis model. The numerical analysis was conducted in three main aspects. First, the impact of the staggered deployment of modules on the stiffness feature of the floating structure was investigated. Subsequently, the variation of the stability of floating array with increasing staggered displacement was studied, and the corresponding dynamic mechanism is discussed in detail. Furthermore, the characteristic transition of the floating array evolving from aligned pattern to brick-pattern with different staggered displacements is studied. The numerical results demonstrate that the staggered deployment of modules could increase the floating system’s stiffness along the longitudinal direction and improve the stability of heave and pitch motions near the head wave. This work could provide guidelines for the configuration design of floating islands for optimal ocean space utilization.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
This research work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (Grant No. 2022JJ30120) and the High-Tech Ship Research Projects Sponsored by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology ([2019]357).
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Information & Authors
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Published In
Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 149 • Issue 5 • May 2023
Copyright
© 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Aug 29, 2022
Accepted: Jan 14, 2023
Published online: Mar 7, 2023
Published in print: May 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Aug 7, 2023
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Alignment
- Bricks
- Building materials
- Buildings
- Coasts, oceans, ports, and waterways engineering
- Continuum mechanics
- Design (by type)
- Displacement (mechanics)
- Dynamics (solid mechanics)
- Engineering fundamentals
- Engineering materials (by type)
- Engineering mechanics
- Geometrics
- Highway and road design
- Materials engineering
- Ocean engineering
- Solid mechanics
- Stiffening
- Structural behavior
- Structural design
- Structural dynamics
- Structural engineering
- Structural mechanics
- Structure reinforcement
- Structures (by type)
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