Experimental Research of a 10 kA HTS Current Lead Using YBCO Tapes

A 10 kA high-temperature superconductor current lead (HTS-CL) using a double-tube stainless steel (SS) shunt has been designed, fabricated, and tested at Institute of plasma physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ASIPP). The current lead consists of 80 parallel the second generation HTS coated conductor with critical current of 220 A at 77 K in self-field, a double-tube SS shunt, and Cu connectors. The 80 YBCO tapes are divided into 20 so-called panels, which are soldered into the 20 grooves on the surface of the double-tube SS shunt and Cu connectors, each panel contains four parallel YBCO tapes. A double-tube shunt consisting of two coaxial tubes is designed. A series of tests were performed to verify the feasibility of the HTS-CL. The measured joint resistance is about 0.3–0.4 μ Ω/cm2. The transport current of 10.515 kA was carried between 5 and 65 K for 1010 s with no quenching. The LOFA time of 569 s and the burnout time over 15 s meeting the design requirements.