Natural modes of helical structures are treated by using the periodic dyadic Green's functions in cylindrical coordinates. The formulation leads to an infinite system of onedimensional integral equations in reciprocal (Fourier) space. Due to the twisted structure of the waveguide together with a quasistatic assumption the set of non-zero coefficients in reciprocal space is sparse and the formulation can therefore be used in a numerical method based on a truncation of the set of coupled integral equations. The periodic dyadic Green's functions are furthermore useful in a simple direct calculation of the quasistatic fields generated by thin helical wires.Index Terms-High-voltage power cables, helical waveguides, dispersion relations, open waveguides, volume integral equations.
I. INTRODUCTIONT he purpose of this paper is to formulate a volume integral equation for the determination of the natural modes of helical structures. Low-frequency applications are of particular importance where it can be anticipated the existence of twisted modes of a particularly simple structure. The presented problem formulation is largely motivated by the need of being able to accurately model the field distribution and losses inside twisting three-phase high-voltage power cables at 50 Hz, see e.g., [8,9]. The approach could also potentially be useful for analyzing the wave propagation characteristics of the so called litz wires.Helical waveguide structures have been treated previously such as e.g., with helical sheaths [5,15], and approximations for wire helices [16,26]. Presently, there are also very promising numerical techniques being developed that are based on Finite Element Modeling [8,9] and the Method of Moments [22]. However, to our knowledge there has not been any general presentation regarding analytical modeling of the natural modes of helical structures.