General Catalogue - ed.60

APPROXIMATE CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN SECTIONS OF THE AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN STANDARD

The table shows the approximate correspondences between the sections of the American standard and the European ones. NOTE American and European standards provide normalized sections. The American standard defines the normalized cross sections of conductors in AWG (American Wire Gauge) and MCM (short for thousands of circular mils or kcmil). These sections are reported respectively in the first and second columns of the table. All sections of the American standard can be expressed in cmil, but for all practical purposes only the sections starting from 250 kcmil are expressed in kcmil (1 MCM = 1kcmil = 1000 cmil), while the lower sections are expressed in AWG. The American standard also provides both even and odd AWG, but only few manufacturers have cables with odd AWG sections in their catalog. The third column shows the equivalences in mm 2 (exact correspondences) of the American standard section. These equivalences are taken from UL 1581 (Reference Standard for Electrical Wires, Cables, and Flexible Cords). The European standard is based on the metric system and defines the normalized cross-sections of conductors in square millimeters (mm²). These sections are in the fourth column of the table and are taken from the EN 60228 standard for sections greater than 0,5 mm 2 . As you can see, there is no exact correspondence between the normalized sections of the two standards. This means that there are only approximate matches and that each approximation is either over or under. For example, the European standard section of 1,5 mm 2 can be approximated up or down by the American harmonized sections AWG 15 and AWG 16. BM terminal lugs have been designed to be used with both native European and American conductors. For this reason, the normalized section of the conductor is specified for each terminal according to both standards. From terminal selection point of view, following cases may arise: To select the terminal, look at conductor section and look for this value in the “mm 2 ” column for the European standard cable and in the “AWG / MCM” column for the American standard cable. When you need to replace a European standard cable with an American standard cable or vice versa, you must first find the corresponding cable section based on the design specifications and then select the terminal based on that section. 1) Terminal selection for a European standard cable 2) Terminal selection for an American standard cable

American Standard sections

European standard sections

AWG MCM (mm²)

mm²

30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

0,0507 0.0647 0,0804

- -

0,08

0,102 0,128 0,162 0,205 0,259 0,324 0,412 0,519 0,653 0,823

0,1

0,14

-

0,2 - 0,25

0,25 0,34

-

0,5

-

0,75 - 1

1,04 1,31 1,65 2,08 2,63 3,31 4,17 5,26 6,63 8,37 10,6 13,3 16,8 21,2 26,7 33,6 42,4

1

1,5

2,5

4

6

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

10

16

25

35

-

1/0 (0)

-

53,5

50

2/0 (00)

-

67,4

70

3/0 (000)

-

85,0

95

4/0 (0000)

-

107,2

120

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

250 300 350 400 500 600 700 800 900

127 152 177 203 253 304 355 405 456 507 633 760 887

150

185

240 300

-

400

-

1000 1250 1500 1750 2000

500 630 800

-

1010

1000

401