Detection of multiple degradations within polymeric cable with multiple joints

Abstract

This paper presents the study on time domain reflectometry (TDR) technique in sectionalizing multiple cable degradations along a polymeric insulated cable with multiple joints. TDR has been widely used for fault localization in polymeric cables. Past studies have found that TDR is able to pinpoint degradation along a cable but they are limited to one degraded cable section only. Hence, this paper investigates the ability of TDR technique to pinpoint two degraded cable sections for an XLPE cable with two joints. This study models a TDR system using MATLAB Simulink with a 300-metre XLPE cable that is divided into three sections of 100 m each and then joint together using two cable joints. The location of the two degraded cable sections are varied to study the ability of TDR in detecting degraded cable at different locations. Experiments are conducted with the same cable configurations to validate the simulation results. Findings from both simulation and experimental results show that the TDR technique is also capable of pinpointing multiple degraded cable sections for a cable with multiple jointing. © 2020, World Academy of Research in Science and Engineering. All rights reserved.