Case Study: JDR Cable Systems achieves 50% cost reduction and 5x more data in subsea cable stress analysis with COMSOL

JDR Cable Systems - Customer Case Study

JDR Cable Systems, a UK designer and manufacturer of subsea umbilicals and reeler packages, faced the challenge of predicting fatigue, contact and thermal stresses in complex, multi-layered, helically armored cables. Physical fatigue testing is slow, costly (typically $30,000–$50,000 and a month or more) and cannot reproduce all service conditions, while local analysis must resolve thousands of contact points in counter-rotating wire layers. To meet this need JDR worked with Continuum Blue to develop a Comsol-based workflow (Comsol Multiphysics with Livelink for MATLAB) that supplements their existing OrcaFlex global system analysis.

Continuum Blue created bespoke MATLAB code to generate full 3D cable geometries and feed advanced material and contact definitions into Comsol for multiphysics simulations of bending, tension and thermal loads. Using Comsol, JDR cut model-build time to two days, reduced project turnaround from ten weeks to two, increased the amount of data produced fivefold, and can analyze up to six armor layers and thousands of localized contacts — achieving comparable insight at roughly half the cost of full physical testing and enabling seven to eight different load-case studies that feed back into their OrcaFlex models.

JDR Cable Systems

Tim Poole

Design Automation Engineer