Behaviour of the thermal impedance of buried power cables

The ampacity of power cables depends heavily on their ability to diffuse their resistive heating to their environment. This ability however depends in turn on the characteristics of the material surrounding the power cable. In this work, the concept of thermal impedance is utilised in order to determine the thermal properties of a power cable buried in earth with respect to the burial depth. To that purpose, a theoretical analysis is conducted concerning the calculation of the thermal impedance for the problem under study. Moreover, an experimental setup is used in order to test the remarks obtained by the theoretical analysis concerning the thermal behaviour of the cable.

► Problem of self heating in buried cables.
► Investigation of dynamic thermal behaviour theoretically and experimentally.
► Thermal impedance calculation and analysis for the cases under study.
► The dynamic behaviour of the cable temperature will vary according to conditions.