Vibration Control of a Pipe Submerged in Water

This thesis, for the first time, studies experimental vibration control of pipe like structures submerged in water by using a Pounding Tuned Mass Damper (PTMD). The PTMD is a novel damper that was recently invented in the Smart Materials and Structures Laboratory at the University of Houston. This new damper innovatively uses collision/impact with viscoelastic materials to dissipate vibration energy. To facilitate the experimental study, a particular submerged vibrating system consisting of four springs and a short-pipe to mimic a jumper was designed. A method to estimate the natural frequencies of a submerged structure was proposed and experimentally verified. Therefore, a PTMD was designed and fabricated to control the vibration of the submerged system. Extensive experimental results clearly demonstrated the effectiveness of the PTMD in vibration mitigation of a submerged structure. Moreover, the submerged PTMD is robust with respect to the natural frequency variation of the structure to be controlled.