Robust mixed H_2 /H_\infty active control for offshore steel jacket platform

This paper presents a robust mixed \(H_2 /H_\infty \) control method for wave-excited offshore jacket platforms. Its objective was to design a controller that minimizes the upper bound of the \(H_2 \) performance measure on platform dynamics satisfying some \(H_\infty \) norm bound constraint simultaneously. Based on mixed \(H_2 /H_\infty \) control theory and linear matrix inequality techniques, a novel approach to stabilize offshore platform vibration with constrained \(H_2 /H_\infty \) performances is proposed. Uncertainties of the wave excitation are considered in dynamic performance analysis of offshore platforms. A reduced mode offshore platform structure under wave excitation is analyzed, and simulations are used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Compared with existing \(H_\infty \) control methods, the proposed approach makes a significant improvement for dynamic performances of offshore platforms under random wave excitation.