Reliability analysis of submarine power cables and determination of external mechanical protections

Reliability analysis of submarine cables is conducted. Fifteen failure cases and 96 submarine cables laid in Japan during a 15 year period are taken as raw data. A simple mathematical model is developed to calculate probable failure rate, to identify critical areas of operation and to determine necessary external protections for a given submarine cable route. The concept of dimensional reduction is applied to develop the mathematical model. The usefulness of the proposed method is justified by reverse application of final results to raw data and from the results of the case studies done for the existing cable routes