Modeling thermal behavior of buried subsea power cables: a review of deterministic, data-driven, and hybrid approaches

Shahbaz Ahmad, Zarghaam Haider Rizvi, Frank Wuttke

Subsea power cables operate within thermally sensitive seabed environments, where heat dissipation into surrounding marine sediments governs allowable current loading and long-term system reliability. As offshore energy transmission expands, understanding the interaction between cable heat generation, sediment thermal properties, and environmental forcing has become increasingly important for accurate thermal assessment and resilient infrastructure design. This paper presents a critical review of thermal–geotechnical interactions in subsea cable systems, synthesizing literature across electrical cable engineering, marine geotechnics, and environmental modeling. Modeling approaches are organized into a taxonomy comprising deterministic thermal models, coupled thermo-hydraulic formulations, data-driven forecasting techniques, and emerging hybrid physics–data frameworks. The review identifies key limitations in current practice, including insufficient representation of seabed heterogeneity, limited treatment of transient environmental forcing, uncertainty in sediment thermal properties, and challenges in integrating monitoring data into predictive models. Building on these observations, a conceptual hybrid modeling framework is proposed as a future research direction, in which physics-based thermal solvers are complemented by data-driven approaches to capture time-dependent boundary conditions and support adaptive assessment. The findings provide a structured foundation for advancing integrated modeling strategies and developing next-generation thermal assessment frameworks that better reflect the dynamic geotechnical conditions governing subsea cable performance.