The study on improving the self-protection ability of HTS coils by removing the insulation and lamination of the various metal tapes

Abstract The high temperature superconducting (HTS) coils have very low normal zone propagation velocity (NZPV) and complicated quench behaviors. Because of these reasons, it is difficult to expect the self-protection. In this paper, two methods are suggested to improve the self-protection ability of HTS coils. One is to remove the insulation between turn–turn winding in HTS coils to enhance the thermal and electrical contacts along transverse direction and to increase the whole thermal stability of them. The other is Cu or Brass tapes are wound with HTS tape wire instead of the insulation to improve the thermal, electrical and mechanical stability of the HTS coils. To clarify the quench behaviors of the suggested coils, the normal zone propagation properties of the fabricated non-insulated HTS pancake coils were shown by measured voltage and temperature traces during the quench as a function of the operating temperature. And the characteristics of the normal transition and amount of the shared current to adjacent layers were quantitatively measured by a Hall sensor located at the center of HTS coils to measure the change of the self-magnetic field by operating current. The current sharing behaviors in the non-insulated HTS coil and the coil with Cu tape inserted were observed. The minimum quench energy (MQE) of the HTS coil with Cu tape inserted was the largest in the tested coils. It means that the HTS coil with Cu tape inserted had the highest transient stability against the thermal disturbances among the tested coils and the improvement of self protection abilities was proved.