Stolberg, 7 November 2007

EN 50288-7: A new standard for instrument cables replacing BS 5308

A lot of company or project-related cable specifications worldwide are based on BS 5308. Now this standard will have to be withdrawn by 31.08.2008 at the latest – therefore most of the existing specifications based on British Standard will have to be revised accordingly.

What was the situation until now?

The world-wide market for instrumentation cables is largely characterised by an immense number of different products – with a further rising tendency. This problem, and it’s really a problem for all involved people, was mainly caused by a normative gap: a missing recognised standards for design, materials and tests.

Today the scene is dominated by a multitude of speciﬁcations with different rules and regulations and often uncoordinated references to standards to be applied. In this way the ‘instrumentation cables’ are invented again and again with all corresponding consequences of loss of economic viability, clearness, rapidity, in summary of loss of efﬁciency in handling. The few existing national standards for instrumentation cables (e. g. UK, France) are not suited as speciﬁcation basis for the international scene. Tailor-made to its national market demands, they cover only a small fraction of the constructional and performance requirements of the international market.

The new European Standard EN 50288-7 for instrumentation cables, erected by the European Standardisation Organisation CENELEC and published in September 2005, is suited to solve this problem. It describes: “Single and multi-element cables with copper conductors … They may be individually and/or overall screened and optionally may incorporate armouring and/or moisture or environmental protection layers.” The constructional design options cover more or less the complete range of products worldwide completed by well coordinated material and test standards.
The structure of this standard does not contain ﬁnished products, but it specifies the single cable elements with its permitted constructional variants as well as the respective characteristics demands.

The application of this standard offers many chances to users, engineers and consultants such as manufacturers. Key improvements are:

cost reduction,
clarity,
conclusiveness,
comparability,
rapidity.

Thus, a conclusive, quality assured standardised work, closed unit is now available.

Wherever the author of the article had the opportunity to present the new standard e. g. in Iran, Saudi Arabia or the Emirates, senior engineers and purchasing manager recognized the advantages of the new standard for their own work. They started to revise the existing specifications or took the opportunity for creating a new conclusive instrument cable specification based on standard EN 50288-7.

Author

Dipl. Ing., Dipl. Wirtsch. Ing. Otto F. Wiechel
LEONI Kerpen GmbH
Member of Technical Work Committee of the EDC and German Cable Trade Association
Member of the UK 411.1 of DKE