Sliding mode control with mixed current and delayed states for offshore steel jacket platforms

This paper is concerned with active control for an offshore steel jacket platform subjected to wave-induced force and parameter perturbations. An uncertain dynamic model for the offshore platform is first established, where uncertainties not only on the natural frequency and the damping ratio of both the offshore platform and the active tuned mass damper (TMD) but also on the damping and stiffness of the TMD are considered. Then, by intentionally introducing a proper time delay into the control channel, a novel sliding mode control scheme is proposed. This scheme uses information about mixed current and delayed states. It is shown through simulation results that this scheme is more effective in both improving the control performance and reducing control force of the offshore platform than some existing ones, such as delay-free sliding mode control, nonlinear control, dynamic output feedback control, and delayed dynamic output feedback control. Furthermore, it is shown that the introduced time delay in this scheme can take values in different ranges while the corresponding control performance of the offshore platform is almost at the same level.