ACSR Conductor Code Names and Designations: How to Read Them

A complete designation answers four questions: what the conductor is made of, how much cross-section each material contributes, how the wires are stranded, and which standard governs dimensions, tolerances and tests. On the material side, AAC is an all-aluminium conductor of hard-drawn EC-grade wire; AAAC is an all-aluminium-alloy conductor, usually of the AlMgSi family, trading some conductivity for strength; ACSR is aluminium stranded over a galvanized steel core; and ACSR-AW replaces the galvanized core with aluminium-clad steel for better corrosion resistance.

A code name like Lynx compresses all of this into a single word. That is convenient on a drawing, but the word only carries engineering meaning together with its parent standard — on its own it is a label, not a specification.

In numeric designations, the first figure is the nominal aluminium cross-section and the second is the nominal steel cross-section, both in mm². ACSR 120/20 therefore means roughly 120 mm² of aluminium over a 20 mm² steel core. These figures are nominal; the actual areas follow from the number and diameter of the wires. The European designation makes this explicit: the same conductor appears in EN 50182 as 122-AL1/20-ST1A, where 122 is the calculated aluminium area, AL1 is hard-drawn aluminium and ST1A is regular-strength steel with class A zinc coating.

The steel-to-aluminium ratio drives the mechanical behaviour. More steel means higher rated tensile strength and less sag under ice and wind load, at the cost of higher mass per unit length and a smaller conductive share of the total section — which is why heavy-ice regions typically specify higher steel ratios.

Stranding notation gives the wire counts: 26/7 means 26 aluminium wires stranded over a 7-wire steel core. Common ACSR constructions run from 6/1 for small distribution sizes through 26/7 and 30/7 for mid-range sections up to 54/7 and 54/19 for large transmission conductors.

The stranding fixes the steel ratio, the overall diameter, the flexibility and the rated tensile strength. Two conductors with nearly identical aluminium areas but different strandings will differ in strength, creep behaviour and diameter, so stranding is never a detail you can skip when matching an offer against a specification.

Markets shaped by British practice (BS 215 and BS 3242) and German practice (DIN 48201 and DIN 48204) — Iran among them — still use inherited code names in tender documents. The British tradition names ACSR conductors after mammals, while American ASTM practice uses bird names tied to kcmil sizes. The figures below are the nominal classes commonly used in Iranian procurement documents; exact areas, wire diameters and strengths must always be taken from the table of the referenced standard:

Treat these names as shorthand, not as specifications: each code has a defined cross-section and property set only within its parent standard.

• Fox: small 6/1 ACSR, commonly cited around the 42 mm² nominal class, widely used on distribution lines
• Mink: 6/1 construction, around the 73 mm² nominal class
• Lynx: 30/7 construction, around the 226 mm² nominal class, a workhorse of Iranian sub-transmission networks
• Canary: large ACSR around the 515 mm² nominal class for high-capacity transmission (the ASTM Canary is 900 kcmil, 54/7)
• Hawk: ASTM bird code for 477 kcmil ACSR, 26/7 stranding
• Drake: ASTM bird code for 795 kcmil ACSR, 26/7 stranding

EN 50182 introduced a self-describing designation system for Europe: the calculated area of each component is written together with its material class. AL1 is hard-drawn pure aluminium with conductivity around 61 % IACS; AL2 through AL7 are AlMgSi-type alloys with higher strength and lower conductivity, so a typical AAAC is designated with the AL3 class; steel classes carry the ST prefix, as in ST1A. Because the name itself states area, material and coating class, no separate decoding table is needed.

At the international level, IEC 61089 defines a comparable system with A1, A2 and A3 aluminium classes and superseded several older IEC conductor standards. In American practice, ASTM B230 covers 1350 aluminium wire, ASTM B231 covers AAC, ASTM B232 covers ACSR, and ASTM B398 and B399 cover 6201 alloy wire and AAAC. A procurement engineer reading both domestic and export tenders needs working familiarity with all three families.

When a tender line says Lynx conductor per attached specification, or simply ACSR 120/20, work through these steps before pricing:

• Identify the governing standard first (BS 215, DIN 48204, EN 50182, IEC 61089 or ASTM B232); if none is stated, raise a written query
• Convert the code name to nominal aluminium/steel areas using that standard's own table, not a generic internet cross-reference
• Check the stranding and the nominal wire diameters against the specification
• Compare mass per kilometre, rated tensile strength and DC resistance at 20 °C with the standard's tabulated values
• Confirm the steel-core zinc coating class, or aluminium-clad core for ACSR-AW, and any greasing requirement
• If the code name and the numbers conflict, the numbers and the standard govern — resolve the discrepancy in writing before bidding

The same name does not necessarily point to the same conductor across standards, and even where the cross-section matches, dimensional tolerances, zinc-coating classes, greasing requirements and acceptance-test regimes differ between BS, DIN, EN, IEC and ASTM documents. Factory and acceptance testing is always anchored to the clauses of a specific standard, never to an animal name, so any contractual dispute ultimately resolves against that standard as well.

The practical recommendation: specify the full standard designation (EN 50182 or IEC 61089 style) together with the standard itself and any project deviations, and put the legacy code name in brackets purely as a cross-reference. Then the manufacturer, the purchaser and the third-party inspector all know exactly what must be delivered and tested.