Cold-shrinkable cable accessories are components that use elastomer materials (commonly used silicone rubber and ethylene-propylene rubber) to be injection vulcanized in the factory, then enlarged and lined with plastic spiral supports to form various cable accessories. During on-site installation, these pre-expansion pieces are placed on the treated cable ends or joints, and the internally supported plastic spiral strips (supports) are pulled out and pressed against the cable insulation to form a cable accessory. Because it relies on elastic retraction at room temperature, rather than heating and shrinking with fire like heat-shrinkable cable accessories, it is commonly known as cold-shrinkable cable accessories. The early cold-shrinkable cable terminals only used silicone rubber cold-shrinkable components for additional insulation, and the electric field treatment still used stress cone type or stress tape wrapping type. Cold shrinkage stress control tubes are generally used, with voltage levels ranging from 10kv to 35kv. For cold shrink cable joints, the 1kv level uses cold shrink insulation tubes for reinforced insulation, and the 10kv level uses cold shrink insulation parts with internal and external semi-conductive shielding layers. The three-core cable terminal bifurcation adopts cold shrink branch sleeve.

    Cold shrinkable cable accessories have the advantages of small size, easy and rapid operation, no need for special tools, wide application range and few product specifications. Compared with heat-shrinkable cable accessories, it does not need to be heated with fire, and moving or bending after installation does not cause the risk of detachment of the internal layers of the accessory like heat-shrinkable cable accessories (because cold-shrinkable cable accessories rely on elastic compression tightness). Compared with prefabricated cable accessories, although they rely on elastic compression force to ensure internal interface characteristics, they do not correspond to the cable cross-section one-to-one and have many specifications like prefabricated cable accessories.

    It must be pointed out that before being installed on the cable, the components of the prefabricated cable accessories have no tension, while the cold-shrinkable cable accessories are under high tension. Therefore, it must be ensured that the cold-shrinkable components should not be stretched during the storage period. There is obvious permanent deformation or elastic stress relaxation, otherwise sufficient elastic pressing force cannot be guaranteed after installation on the cable, and thus good interface characteristics cannot be guaranteed.