Study of cable crimping factors affecting contact resistance of medium voltage cable ferrule and lug

In this study, crimping factors that have possibilities to affect the contact resistance of medium voltage cable ferrule and lug had been determined and further verified in laboratory experiments. A good crimping is important in order to achieve a very good contact resistance for cable joint (Below 50micro-Ohms). Other than that, good contact resistance between cables joint can reduce the chance of having hotspots that are commonly caused by overheating in cable joint. It was found in most situations that the measurement of contact resistance at site is not possible due to insufficient access to make a measurement. Most of cable failure cases were caused by failure of cable joints. Hence, a better crimping or cable connection method is needed to ensure a good contact in every cable joint. There are few crimping factors that have been pondered in this study and the factors are; (1) Crimping pressure, (2) Number of crimp indents, (3) Location of crimp indents, and (4) Shape of crimp indents. Twenty eight different configuration of compression connectors and bolted connectors for 240 mm2 stranded aluminium cable conductors have been examined in order to identify and clarify the correlations between the designs characteristics, applied pressure, configurations, crimp numbers and other possible parameters to the quality of the connection of ferrule and lug. The quality is assessed with the basis in contact resistance measurement and tensile strength after sample preparation. The results showed that applied pressure does not necessarily contributed to increase of contact resistance, but configuration and crimp numbers does. These results also showed that deep indent crimp is better than hexagonal crimp for 240 mm2 stranded aluminium cable conductors and how different deep indent crimp in terms of quality compared to the inc