Modelling and identification of offshore towers with general damping

The modelling problem of offshore towers is considered. A model is proposed which includes viscous and hydrodynamic drag damping and takes into account the stochastic nature of the problem. The model is decoupled into a set of modal equations by using the complex mode theory. A technique is developed to identify the modal parameters and the complex mode shapes by using the noisy excitation and response measurements. This technique is computationally efficient and accurate in the sense of minimizing a criterion function of the estimates variance. A simulation example is presented to demonstrate the results.