Keywords

Cable, Power heating, Joule effect, electric current, conduction, convection, radiation
 

Context / Goal

The increase in electricity needs leads the cable producers to make electricity transit through data cables. These cables, called Power over Ethernet (PoE/PoE+), enable data transmission and electric power at the same time. However, the temperature field has to be monitored in order to avoid a too high increase in temperature which would lead to lost data packages.

To have a good understanding of this process, NEXANS, the world expert in cables, asked SIMTEC to develop a numerical model with COMSOL Multiphysics®. The goal of this model is to obtain the temperature field in the cable and to find the optimal design of cable.
 

SIMTEC's Achievements / Results

The first mission of SIMTEC was to visit the CLIENT on-site, to discuss the modeling assumptions on the geometry and to develop an efficient model. This work has been done in partnership with the Nexans Research Center in Lyon, France.

The resulting geometry has been implemented by SIMTEC with COMSOL Multiphysics®.

The heat transfer (conduction, convection, radiation) has been considered inside the conductor and its insulating sleeve. Depending on the configuration, free convection had to be taken into consideration. Due to the geometrical complexity of the bundle, special attention to radiative effect had to be made to ensure the numerical convergence of the nonlinear problem.

The resulting model has been validated by comparison with experimental data.