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The University of Southampton
Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute

Tim Hughes

PhD entitled Understanding environmental controls on the state of sub-seafloor High Voltage Cables

Tim Hughes's Photo

Hi, I'm Tim Hughes and I studied within Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute at the University of Southampton.

Before moving to NOCS to join the geology and geophysics group here, I studied physics at the University of Warwick.

Submarine HV cables are becoming more and more essential to modern power transmission, as initiatives like offshore wind farms and inter-country power links are proposed and implemented. Despite this, little work has been done to investigate the relationship between these cables and their environment. Some of these cables are failing before their expected lifetime is reached. Because monitoring these cables in-situ is so hard, it is hoped that a better overall understanding of these systems and their environment can explain the reasons behind these failures.

I am looking to develop analytical and numerical models to describe the heat flow in and around these under-seafloor HV cables. I will have to consider a number of different environmental factors and different geological situations, as well as properties of the HV cable itself (all of which may have an important effect on operation) in order to determine where the main contributions to this premature failure phenomenon come from. This may also involve laboratory experiments to test the effectiveness of the models and help build on the early stages research I am conducting.

My supervisors are:

Dr. Tim Henstock; NOCS (Geology and Geophysics group) Dr. Thomas Gernon; NOCS (Geology and Geophysics group) Dr. Justin Dix; NOCS (Coastal Processes group) Dr. James Pilgrim; ECS (Electronics and Electrical Engineering group)

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