Abstract
A method is introduced for impedance and loss calculation of three-core power cables with steel armoring, based on 2D finite element method (FEM) computations. The pitching effect of the cores and armor wires is taken into account by 1) enforcing identical net current on the wires, and by 2) introducing a fictitious non-conductive material between the wires having a complex-valued permeability. The permeability is obtained by considering the effect of the pitching on the total energy in a volume slab around each wire, which involves the solving of a small 2D FEM problem in an optimization loop. The method permits to calculate the positive-sequence and zero-sequence impedance on cables, induced sheath currents, and losses in cores, sheaths, and armor. The method is validated against published results using a full 3D FEM model. The calculations are fast, requiring only a few seconds of computation time. The procedure is simplified by use of pre-calculated look-up tables for the fictitious material permeability value.