HEATSHRINK SLEEVES

Canusa heat-shrink sleeves are most often used for girth weld coating. They guarantee a high quality joint
protection and are compatible with all anticorrosion mainline coating systems.
Heatshrink sleeves comprise of a threelayer coating system. The outer layer consists of a dual laminated
polyolefin backing a crosslinked and prestretched sheet, which upon heating will shrink the polyolefin layer
to its original size, and copolymer hot melt or mastic adhesive. Under the heatshrink 2layer film is a 2part
liquid epoxy primer.
The twocomponent epoxy primer is one of the major components of the corrosion protection system.

Competitors' shrink sleeves result in a nonuniform corrosion barrier layer of epoxy coatings because they are
installed over "wet" primer. In such case, during installation and shrinking, the primer is distorted. This liquid
primer runs off the convex parts of the welded joint, or it is rubbed off during installation, thus leaving these part
practically unprotected by primer.

Only when the sleeve is installed over primer that has already been cured, as Canusa heat shrink systems are, th
benefits of the corrosion protection system are fully realized.

When heat is applied to the sleeve wrapped around a joint,

the adhesive melts and becomes a liquid, while the sleeve
backing begins to shrink.
The radial shrinking forces of the sleeve squeeze the fluid
adhesive into all the pipe surface irregularities, while the
sleeve conforms tightly to the joint profile and to the mainline
coating.
Upon cooling, the adhesive solidifies, effecting a tough bond
to the pipe and the mainline coating.

Canusa heatshrink slee

being installed using gas tor
There are three basic types of sleeves used to protect joints (fig. below):
TM TM
CanusaWrap
WrapidSleeve
CanusaTube
TMtwo

heatshrinkable
piece
onepiece
protective
corrosion
pre
bulk

Sleeve Backing Types

Backings are available for normal or heavy duty service.

Yellow backing is typically used for buried applicatio

and also for hot climates to reflect the heat during
prolonged exposure to the sun during construction.

Black UV resistant backing is used for above ground

applications.
The yellow sleeves come with standard builtin

thermochromic pigment which changes to orange at the corr

temperature
and then reverts to yellow upon cooling.

The backing can optionally be supplied with a surface painte

indicator.
Adhesive Types
The sleeve adhesives falls into two main categories mastics
and hotmelts.

Mastics are tacky, pressuresensitive, sticky, and softer

adhesives. Therefore they bond relatively easily to substrates
upon contact and pressure. The heat helps the adhesive flow
and thus enhances the bonding action.

They are more forgiving than hotmelt adhesives to installatio

conditions, such as pipe cleanliness and heat input. Mastics
have lower but still good peel strength and generally good
cathodic disbondment resistance. Mastic sleeves are self
healing; a puncture in the backing is sealed by the mastic.

Hotmelts are nontacky, dry, hard adhesives based

on semicrystalline resins. They have very high shear strength
and often high peel strengths.
Hotmelts are formulated to operate at high temperatures.

On the downside, they require a much higher degree of surfa

cleanliness and high preheats. The preheat temperature can b
reduced by using epoxy primer with appropriate sleeves.

There is a full range of heat shrink sleeves, tapes, and systems based on inservice and application requirements.

Canusa Product Line

Argus offers an extensive selection of coatings for the following applications:

girth weld coating on mainline pipelines with variable temperature

requirements,

weld joints during directional drilling (HDD),

pipeandcasing systems in road boring operations,

offshore applications for field joint protection,

flange joints, T's, valves, bends and other specials,

short pipe sections,

water mains,

thermal insulation.

and also for:

patch and repair,

field applied pipeline rehabilitation,

application
Canusa heat shrink slee

Special heatshrinkable corrosion protection sleeves are designed for hot water transmission pipelines.
These sleeves provide not only corrosion protection for the joint, but thermal insulation as well.

Local damage to coating may be repaired with melt sticks

and special patches.
Similar patches are used for corrosion protection of points
where cathodic protection electrodes attach to the pipe.