Towards active cable reburial monitoring using distributed fiber-optic sensing over 40km of a high voltage marine interconnector

Abstract

Distributed Temperature Sensing (DTS) and Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) measurements were acquired over a 40 km section of the 137 km long Skagerrak 4 (SK4) subsea cable before and during a retrenching operation. Five sections of the cable between 140 m and 280 m in length had been identified for reburial using conventional geophysical and video techniques. DTS data taken over a three week period prior to the reburial clearly showed cold spots at all of the planned reburial sites. Absolute temperature at these locations fluctuated by over 8 °C, which is interpreted as being in response to temporally and spatially varying bottom water temperatures. The reburial process itself was accurately monitored in real-time using DAS. After reburial, consistent DTS temperatures within ± 1 °C were measured at all reburial sites, comparable to the adjacent buried sections of the cable and thereby confirming reburial was successful.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Justin Dix: orcid.org/0000-0003-2905-5403

ORCID for James Pilgrim: orcid.org/0000-0002-2444-2116

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