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Gauges & Cables

American wire gauge (AWG), also known as the Brown & Sharpe wire gauge, is a standardized wire gauge system used in the United States and other countries, especially for nonferrous, electrically conducting wire. more...

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The steel industry uses a different numbering system for their wire thickness gauges (for example, W&M Wire Gauge or US Steel Wire Gauge or the different Music Wire Gauge) so data below does not apply to steel wire.

Increasing gauge numbers give decreasing wire diameters, which is similar to many other non-metric gauging systems. This seemingly-counterintuitive numbering is derived from the fact that the gauge number is related to the number of drawing operations that must be used to produce a given gauge of wire; very fine wire (for example, 30 gauge) requires far more passes through the drawing dies than does 0 gauge wire.

Note that for gauges 5 through about 14, the wire gauge is effectively the number of bare solid wires that, when placed side by side, span 1 inch. That is, 8 gauge is about 1/8 inches in diameter.

In the same fashion, AWG is also commonly used to specify body piercing jewelry sizes, especially smaller sizes.

Formula

By definition, No. 36 AWG is 0.005 inches diameter, and No. 0000 is 0.46 inches diameter. The ratio of these sizes is 92, and between them are 38 sizes, with equal ratios between each adjacent pair of sizes. (The 40 different sizes result in 39 size changes.) (Sizes with multiple zeros are successively larger than No. 0 and can be denoted using "number of zeros/0", for example 4/0 for 0000.) Therefore, the diameter of a No. n AWG wire is

$d_n = 0.005~\mathrm{inch} \times 92 ^ \frac{36-n}{39}$ and its cross-section area is

$A_n = \frac{\pi}{4} d_n^2 = 0.000019635~\mathrm{inch}^2 \times 92 ^ \frac{36-n}{19.5}$ For an m/0 AWG wire, use n = −(m−1) in the above formulas. For instance, for No. 0000 or 4/0, use n = −3.

The ratio between successive sizes is the 39th root of 92, or approximately 1.1229322.

The sixth power of this ratio is very close to 2, which means for an increase in six gauge numbers, the wire diameter is changed by a ratio of 2 (No. 10 is about one-half the diameter of No. 4 AWG). A decrease of three gauge numbers doubles the area of a wire. A decrease of ten gauge numbers, for example from No. 10 to 1/0, multiplies the area and weight by approximately 10 and reduces the resistance by approximately 10.

Table of AWGs and approximate corresponding sizes

The table below shows various data including both the resistance of the various wire gauges and the allowable current (ampacity) based on plastic insulation. The diameter information in the table applies to solid wires. Stranded wires are calculated by calculating the equivalent cross sectional copper area. The table below assumes DC, or AC frequencies equal to or less than 60 Hz, and does not take skin effect into account. Turns of wire is on a best-case scenario when winding tightly packed coils.