High Resolution Imaging and Quantitative Analysis of HV Cable and Pipeline Trenching in the Marine Environment

Summary The life time performance of both HV cables (ORE inter -array and export cables and cross-continental shelf interconnectors) and oil and gas pipelines are limited by the physical properties of the sediment in which the cable/pipeline is buried. In the case of HV cables the burial material and burial depth have implications for heat dissipation from the cable, which in turn plays a primary role in cable rating and its lifetime operation and maintenance. For a pipeline changes in the density and strength of the overburden material can impact on buckling potential once in operation. Our current understanding of the key physical parameters of the sediment (e.g. grain size, porosity, permeability, thermal conductivity, relative density and strength) are based on in situ measurements of the ambient condition and rarely take account of physical property changes during the trenching process. We provide initial acoustic inversion results from high resolution 3D Chirp volumes from both a prototype scale, CPT calibrated, tank experiment and in situ trenched cables in a range of substrates. We shall demonstrate the potential of acoustic inversion to non-destructively quantify trench disturbance in this critical engineering scenarios.