LIMITING CURRENT AND STABILITY OF CABLE-IN-CONDUIT CONDUCTORS

The scope of the following paper is to revise the model of the well-cooled/ill-cooled transition in cable-in-conduit conductors (CICCs), introducing the concept of a transition regime where the energy margin decreases from high to low (ideally zero) values gradually. This description is arrived at using intuitive power and energy balances to produce simple expressions involving only the geometry and operating conditions of the cable. These expressions will be translated into operating limits on the cable space current density and will be checked against numerical experiments.