The development and use of heat-shrinkable materials as high voltage power cable terminations

The method of terminating high — voltage paper — insulated power cables has remained virtually unchanged in the last 50 years. Traditionally these involve cast or fabricated metal cable boxes filled with bitumen compound and sealed with lead wipe to the sheath of the cable. Heat-shrinkable materials have made possible an entirely new approach to the termination of these types of cable which is quickly replacing the older techniques for both indoor and outdoor use, to the extent that during the past three years over 3000 of such terminations have been installed throughout Europe. The purpose of this paper is to outline the differences between these materials and conventional thermoplastics and describe their evaluation and use as terminations for high-voltage power cables.