IMPROVED MEDIUM VOLTAGE BRANCH SPLICE AND METHOD OF MAKING THE SAME

摘要

A branch splice for joining at least three shielded medium-voltage electric cables (11, 16, 21). Each of the cables has at least one conductor surrounded by a dielectric layer (13, 18, 23). To form the splice, a section of the cable dielectric layer is removed to expose a length of the conductor, and a section of an outer electrically conductive shield is removed to expose a length of the dielectric layer so that the exposed conductors of the cables can be joined using the connector. At least two of the cables are positioned in relatively close substantially parallel relationship with each other. The splice includes a stress controlling adapter (40) having an elastomeric body. The adapter body is provided with at least two hollow portions allowing the body to be placed onto the outer electrically conductive shield and the exposed section of the dielectric layer of the cables which are positioned in substantially parallel relationship. In one embodiment, the material of the stress controlling adapter (40) has a relative dielectric constant (epsilon) of greater than 3 and a dielectric strength of at least 10 kV/mm, and includes conductive microspheres uniformly distributed throughout an elastomeric matrix. In another embodiment, the adapter utilizes geometric stress control. The splice is completed by covering with an insulating layer (55) extensible across the splice so as to overlap a portion of the shield of each of the cables and a semi-conductive shielded layer positioned over the insulating layer which is connectable to each of the cable shields.