Study on submarine cable tension during laying

In order to design submarine optical-fiber cable, it is very important to clarify the cable tension and fiber elongation during laying because the fiber elongation allowance is very small. When submarine cable is being laid from a cable ship, cable weight in water plus such additional tension as bottom tension caused by the negative slack and tension due to ship motion work upon the cable [1]. Cable tension changes during laying were theoretically studied. This paper quantitatively clarifies bottom tension dependence at the touchdown point caused by the negative slack upon both water depth and ship velocity. It is shown that the shallower the water depth is and the faster the ship velocity is, the larger the bottom tension is. The theoretical bottom tension showed good agreement with the experimental value measured during sea trials on laying submarine optical-fiber cable [2], [3]. This paper also describes the correlation between cable, ship motion, and cable tension vibration by examining experimental results. It quantitatively clarifies the tension vibration magnitude.