Tech Briefs Magazine - November 2023 - 41

Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Ocean Platform Motion Control
Leveraging water ballast to control dynamics in floating structures.
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL
N
motion in
ASA engineers have developed a new
approach to mitigating unwanted
Ideally
floating
structures.
suited to applications including offshore
wind energy platforms and barges, the
innovation uses water ballast as a motion
damping fluid.
This innovation builds upon extensive
expertise of NASA in developing novel
vibration and motion damping control
methods for various NASA large-scale
structural applications. It leverages existing
ballast fluid of a maritime structure
to proactively mitigate undesirable resonant
response characteristics of the platform
or vessel.
Essentially, this innovation couples water
ballast as a functional working mass
to the dynamic motion of a floating
structure to provide passive motion management
of the primary structure. The
system can be implemented pre-design
or post manufacture.
The systems are simple and are easily
manufactured, transported, and implemented
onto a primary structure. The
Schematics showing water ballast tanks used for motion damping of a floating platform structure.
(Image: NASA)
NASA technology has been designed
(patents applied for) for a range of platform
designs and can be further customized
depending on the final application
requirements.
To date, target applications have included
floating offshore wind energy
platforms and service barges. Prototypes
have been built and tested in a windwave
tank test bed at the University of
Maine. These have been developed and
tested as part of DOE's ATLANTIS floatTension
Element Vibration Damping
A fundamentally new approach to structural vibration control.
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL
I
nnovators at NASA Johnson Space Center
have designed a circumferential
scissor spring mechanism, NASA engineers
have developed a new approach to
mitigating unwanted structural vibrations.
NASA's method is fundamentally
different from conventional passive and
active vibration damping methods widely
used today. Tension Element Vibration
Damping uses disruptive modal
coupling between two structures, each
with their own vibrational behavior, to
proactively provide vibration damping
for one or both of the structures.
This novel vibration damping method
reacts to and uses the vibrational tensile/compressive
displacement itself to
disrupt the vibration. Resistance to the
Tech Briefs, November 2023
displacement force is provided by either
hydraulic, pneumatic, or magnetic
means to suit the target application
and the size/displacement of the
vibration. Compared to conventional
vibration passive and active damping
methods, Tension Element Vibration
Damping systems are simple in design,
lightweight, highly effective, and
adaptable to a range of applications
with different structure sizes and
types of vibration.
The method presents a novel method
of managing the dynamic behavior
of structures by capturing the vibrational
displacement of the structure
via a connecting link and using this
motion to drive a resistive element.
www.techbriefs.com
ing offshore wind energy development
program and have demonstrated highly
effective control of the platform motion
induced by wind and wave action.
NASA is actively seeking licensees to
commercialize this technology. Please
contact NASA's Licensing Concierge at
Agency-Patent-Licensing@mail.nasa.gov
or call at 202-358-7432 to initiate licensing
discussions. For more information, visit
https://technology.nasa.gov/patent/
MFS-TOPS-124.
A schematic of the Tension Element Vibration
Damping technology. (Image: NASA)
41

https://technology.nasa.gov/patent/MFS-TOPS-124 http://www.techbriefs.com

Tech Briefs Magazine - November 2023

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