Cable Structure Based on NS100

This report will mainly focus on the figure above to elaborate the structure of a cable.

Conductor
Conductor is the functioning part of a cable, which transfers electricity. Coopers and aluminum wires
are usually used as a conductor material because of their high electrical conductivity. Aluminum has
61 percent of the conductivity of copper but copper costs 4 times as much as Aluminum, which
makes it cost-effective to use aluminum as conductor. On the other hand, the conductor is usually
stranded instead of using a chunk of metal. Flexibility and malleability are among the reasons, but

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most importantly, because of skin effect, having more copper wires increases the “skin” areas, which
improves conductivity.

Conductor is covered by conductor screen, which is used to maintain a uniformly divergent electric
field, and to contain the electric field within the cable core. The conductor screen uses semi-
conducting materials to “smooth” out the surface irregularities and keep the voltage on the inside of
the insulation the same. In the figure, 3-core indicates three phase electricity are transferring in this
cable.

Insulation
Insulation in this figure includes XLPE insulation, moisture barrier (water swellable tape), stranded
wire screen and filler. The purpose of insulation is to support and separate conductors without
allowing current through themselves. The most used insulation material is XLPE, which surpasses
PVC, EPR and silicone rubbers in low to extra high voltage performance. The mechanical properties
of the XLPE are also superior as it offers great tensile strength, elongation and impact resistances.
Similarly, XLPE is covered by an insulation screen, which serves same purpose as the conductor
screen.

The outer layer of insulation is moisture barrier, in this figure, it is water swellable tape. As the name
suggests, this part serves as moisture barrier to prevent water from coming in and keep the inside of
cable dry, as moisture will affect conductivity.

Cooper wires are used to form a stranded wire screen. This stranded wire screen is a protective
screen. It is connected to ground, so if something should cut through the cable this screen will
generally connect the conductor to cause fuse to blow, rather than letting the electricity to flow
through the object that is cutting the cable.

Filler is generally used to make the cable round by filling the void of the imperfect wire packing. Filler
materials can use polyethylene, foam fillers, cotton, paper and even steel when strength is needed.

Sheath
Sheath consists of inner sheath and outer sheath. Inner sheath gives circular shape of the cable and
serves as a bedding to protect the cores and as a separation sheath. All multi-core cables have either
extruded PVC inner sheath or thermoplastic wrapped inner sheath, which makes it possible to be
removed without doing any damage to insulation. Outer sheath provides mechanical protection and
other protection against water, termite and soil compositions. In this case, high density polyethylene
(HDPE) is used for outer sheath, other materials such as LSOH or HFFR could also be used depending
on different conditions.