Impact protection of offshore structures via high specific stiffness sandwich braces with a multistable transition mechanism

Offshore structures are impacted by environmental loads, and the low damping properties of metal structures make them prone to lasting vibrations. A sandwich metal brace containing an composite column with a multistable transition mechanism, which exhibits a high specific stiffness and enhanced damping, is designed. Performing a hybrid analysis of sandwich lamination and multi-stable buckling and noted: the sandwich structure conducts the effective cross section of bending stiffness of the composite column, which control critical buckling load; the eccentric end caps conduct the loading axis of the composite column, which controls the displacement increment in the postbuckling. So, the force-displacement hysteretic relation of the composite column can be effectually adjusted by the appropriate physical parameters of the asymmetric composite structure of the novel sandwich brace. The novel braces are utilized to stiffen a offshore structure, which effectively mitigates the slamming response in the finite element simulation.