Numerical Investigation of the Effect of Vortex Induced Vibrations (VIV) Parameters on the Behavior of Submarine Power Cables: A Comparison With Scaled Down Experimental Results

Abstract For an installed submarine power cable, fatigue is one of the main causes of failure. For static power cables there are cases such as free spans, spans between touch-down point (TDP) and J/I-Tube bell mouth and repair/sea joint procedures that may lead to failure due to fatigue as a result of Vortex-Induced Vibrations (VIV). Similar failure modes are applicable to dynamic cables since they are exposed to current flows for their expected operational life of more than 25 years. Although much research has been done in the field of oil and gas for VIV phenomena on flexible pipe lines, there is no extended and in-depth corresponding literature on submarine power cables. The scope of the present work is to investigate and demonstrate the effect of parameters such as Strouhal number, reduced bandwidth and added mass coefficient on the predicted VIV behavior of submarine power cables, both static and dynamic. The standard industry software SHEAR7 is used in order to assess the effects of each of these parameters. Finally, a comparative study was performed with the results of a scaled down experiment, which took place in the basin of Maritime Research Institute of Netherlands (MARIN) within the scope of the Horizon 2020 (H2020) FLOTANT project and studied the response of a towed dynamic power cable.