Experimental Study on the Influence of Cross-Section Type of Marine Cable Conductors on the Bending Performance

Through the development of marine energy, marine cables are the key equipment for transmission of electrical energy between surface platforms and underwater facilities. Fatigue failure is a critical failure mode of marine cables. The bending performance of the cable conductor has a major influence on both bending and fatigue performances of the overall cable structure. To study the influence of different types of the conductor cross-section on the bending performances of marine cable conductors, three types of copper conductors with the same cross-sectional area, i.e., noncompressed round, compressed round, and shaped wire conductors, were selected. The experimental results demonstrated that the cross-section type significantly affects the bending performances of copper conductors. In particular, the bending stiffness of the shaped wire conductor is the highest among the three conductor types. Four key evaluation parameters, i.e., the bending stiffness, maximum bending moment, envelope area, and engineering critical slip point, were selected to compare and analyze the bending hysteresis curves of the three copper conductors. The differences in the key evaluation parameters were analyzed based on the structural dimensional parameters, processing methods, and classical bending stiffness theoretical models of the three copper conductor types. The results provide an important theoretical guidance for the structural design and engineering applications of marine cable conductors.