On-Coupling Mechanical, Electrical and Thermal Behavior of Submarine Power Phases

Floating offshore renewable energies (OREs), such as offshore floating wind turbines (wind energy) or wave power (wave and wave energy), are increasingly in demand. Submarine cables that transmit the energy produced from offshore farms all the way to onshore stations are critical structures that must be able to work perfectly over 20 years without any maintenance. In order to reduce the significant costs associated with electrical cables, it is important to optimize the dimensioning of the components of these cables, or to develop structural monitoring techniques that target zero and/or minimum maintenance over their lifespan. In this paper, we FEM of the impact of damage mechanisms of the conductor part of a submarine power phase on its mechanical, electrical, and thermal behavior. The main damage mechanisms are local plasticity and wire failure. The first mechanical study made it possible to obtain the elasto-plastic behavior of the conductor. The electrical study took into consideration the deformed geometry of the conductor in the elasto-plastic domain, as well as the non-homogeneous distribution of the electrical conductivity of the conductor. Their influence on the electrical resistance of the conductor was then analyzed. Finally, we studied the impact of plasticity and conductor failure on the thermal behavior of the phase. The temperature differences obtained in the numerical analysis of this work may be used further to help preventive and curative maintenance of the cables, for example, by using an optical fiber as sensor for structural health monitoring.