How we approach complex buried cables
A cable route rarely runs in isolation — nearby pipelines, tight clearances, varying soil, multiple circuits. Here's the process behind a defensible ampacity number.
Thermal soil analysis
Finite-element calculation of heat conduction in the soil around cables and nearby pipelines (isotherms), including the non-linear soil dry-out effect at high temperature.
Current-carrying capacity
Full loss calculation — conductor, dielectric, sheath and armour — and the maximum current per cable design, directly per IEC 60287-1-1 and -2-1.
FEM ↔ IEC, iterated together
The actual soil temperature from the FEM analysis feeds the IEC calculation, iterating to a consistent current — instead of guessing a fixed soil resistivity from a table.
Results & reporting
Reporting built to give real insight into the cable system — ampacity results, temperature profiles, and, where it helps, a dynamic interactive view to explore the data further.
A real run of the process above, on an illustrative example case — not a real client project.
L2's conductor temperature ends up 0.8 °C above its own 90 °C target — flagged automatically, because L2 follows L1's current rather than being solved independently. Exactly the kind of check a manual back-and-forth risks missing.
The same example case, interactively — cut planes in X/Y/Z, a position slider, zoom, and temperature on hover. Works fully offline, right here too.
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