3.4. Effect of the stratification of sea water on the cable configuration
The analysis in the previous subsection assumes the uniform density of the sea water. However, the actual seas are stratified, thus the buoyancy acting on a cable can spatially change. This study examines the effect of the density stratification on the configuration using two typical density profiles View the MathML source in summer and winter seasons (Fig. 14a) [9]. In summer, the surface of the sea is much stratified especially in summer: the respective density of the surface and bottom layers is about 1022 and 1028 kg m−3. It means that the difference of the density is maximally 0.5–0.6% of the reference density. Three configurations of the cable (Fig. 14b) are computed by the method shown in the Section 3.4. They have little differences; the buoyancy on the cable can be estimated accurately even using the reference density.