Current imbalance in superconducting strand-to-strand joint and its relaxation in multistage cable-in-conduit conductor

This paper presents non-uniformity or imbalance in the transport current of the superconducting toroidal-field coil (TFC) made of multistage cable-in-conductor (CICC) due to inductive current in a strand-to-strand (STS) soldered joint of cylindrical shape and also the relaxation of the inductive current in the conductor. Using an NbTi CICC consisting of 486 strands, a joint sample is fabricated and experimented. An external magnetic field of symmetric trapezoidal waveform is vertically applied to the sample joint. The field maximum and the ramp rate (dB/dt) maximum are I T and 0.25 T/s, respectively. Voltage taps and Hall probes are utilized to measure the inductive voltage and current. Experimental results are analyzed numerically using an infinite electrical transmission line model, which is found to explain our sample system well. The flattop induced current is proportional to the dB/dt. Being different from our expectation that the inductive current will distribute widely over the cross-sectional surface of the joint, it localizes to a narrow region; a triplet located in the outer-most side of the joint, for instance. The relaxation phenomenon in the induced current is observed experimentally. From numerical analysis, the relaxation length is found to increase logarithmically with decreasing dB/dt and saturate at a certain value of dB/dt. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.