Quench Behavior and Protection in Cryocooler-Cooled YBCO Pancake Coil for SMES

Abstract

The thermal behavior of a high-temperature superconducting (HTS) coil is significantly different from that of low-temperature superconducting (LTS) coil because it has a greater volumetric heat capacity at the temperature required for practical use. Therefore, the possibility of quench in HTS coils is much lower than that in LTS coils. In the application of the YBCO coil to Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage (SMES) system, electrical charging and discharging are repeated; therefore, the superconducting characteristics of the YBCO coated conductor may deteriorate as a result of cyclic subjection to tensile strain. To enhance the reliability and safety of HTS coil, protection scheme assuming a quench is also required for HTS coil. In this study, we focus on the coil wound with YBCO laminated bundle (parallel) conductor supposing SMES application and investigate the characteristics of normal-zone propagation and the thermal behavior within the coil during a quench by using a newly developed computer code based on the finite element method and an equivalent circuit. And we also propose a quench detection method using observation of nonuniform current in YBCO laminated bundle conductor and discuss the validity of the detection method comparing with conventional quench-voltage detection.