Search

We present a design of a 400-MHz/60-mm all-REBCO nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) magnet (H400) that consists of a stack of 56 double-pancake (DP) coils. With the multiwidth no-insulation technique incorporated, DP coils were wound with REBCO tapes of five different widths, i.e., 4.1, 5.1, 6.1, 7.1, and 8.1 mm; DP coils placed at and near the magnet midplane were wound with the narrowest (4.1 mm wide) REBCO tapes, whereas those with progressively wider tapes were placed toward the top and bottom of the magnet, where the “perpendicular field B ⊥ ” is at its peak within the magnet. The magnet was designed to be operated under a conduction cooling environment at 20 K. Once successfully completed, the magnet will be installed as an NMR user facility in the Korea Basic Science Institute. Basic magnet performances and major technical challenges were discussed.

This paper presents experimental and theoretical studies of the no-insulation (NI) winding method of second-generation high-temperature superconducting (HTS) wire. We compared two single pancake coils wound by two different HTS wires. One pancake coil is made of a normal HTS wire with an electroplated copper stabilizer. The other pancake coil is made of the same HTS wire with the only difference in an additional outermost layer made of stainless steel. We employed an equivalent circuit model to evaluate our experimental results. We tested both coils by the same simple operating procedure consisting of two steps: first, ramping up of current from zero to holding current (IH) and second, keeping the IH at minimum 500 s. We also tested the stability of the coil wound by an HTS wire with an additional layer of stainless steel by applying a current exceeding a critical current of the coil. We observed a charging time of the metal-cladding HTS coil reduced to a quarter of copper-electroplated HTS coil.

To improve the poor efficiency of the conventional induction heater using copper coil, a high temperature superconducting (HTS) DC induction heater is considered. In this study, we designed and built an HTS DC induction heater prototype with an iron core, and tested the insulated and no-insulation (NI) double pancake coils (DPCs). The results show that the critical currents of the DPCs with the iron core somewhat decrease than those without the iron core. The V-I curve of the insulated coil is a standard one of the superconductor, but a linear voltage appears in the NI coil due to the contact resistance between neighboring wires. For the insulated coil, the magnetic flux density of the air core is proportional to the coil current. However, a charging delay is found in the NI coil: The increment of the magnetic flux density for the NI coil is negligible when the current is increasing at first. Then the magnetic flux density increases and finally saturates even if the current is stable. The inductance of the coil with the iron core is about six times of that without the iron core.

With much effort devoted by many research groups, the performance of 2nd generation (2G) superconducting wires, also called coated conductors (CC), was drastically improved, leading to many meaningful and impressive demonstrations of electric power devices. Now that the performances such as critical current, in-field characteristics, and mechanical strengths became sufficient to the application, the attention has moved to how we can produce long 2G wires with high uniformity. Many in-line inspection tools are tested and introduced to address these challenges. In this paper, we describe two methods that we adopted for in-line monitoring and feedback control of layer deposition. One is for texture control of ion beam assisted deposition (IBAD) of an MgO layer through reflection high-energy electron diffraction (RHEED) pattern monitoring and analysis. The other is for composition control of a superconducting layer through surface color observation and control of metal source evaporation rates. By applying the above two methods, we achieved in-plane texture of about 4.8 ° in the MgO layer, as measured by FWHM of phi-scan of (220) peak, and the critical current of 750 A/12 mm width in the GdBCO layer along the length of more than 650 m, with excellent uniformity.

We fabricated superconducting magnet using second-generation (2G) high-temperature superconducting wire by SuNAM. Magnetic field strength at the center is 4 T, and room temperature bore diameter is 203 mm. The magnet consists of 30 double pancake coils (DPCs) with the inner diameter of 245 mm and outer diameter of 297 mm. All double pancakes were wound by no-insulation method and performance were tested separately before assemble. Tested DPCs were resistively connected by HTS tape(splice joint), and assembled coil was conduction cooled by a two-stage Gifford-McMahon cryo-cooler to the operating temperature of 8 K. The size of magnet is 452 mm in height. Current, voltage, and field strength were measured as a function of time with various ramping up and down conditions and results were compared with the simulated behavior. The coil generates 4 T when operating current ramped to 205 A by 0.03 A/s without quench. Initial cool down time was 72 h and the measure field homogeneity in 10 mm DSV was 0.015% and 0.012% in radial axis and vertical axis, respectively. The results showed that no-insulation winding method is a possible option for making compact magnet coil with sufficient structural integrity, thermal and electrical stability at the same time. The magnet showed quench at field strength of 4.49 T when ramped with 0.2 A/s to 235 A. The magnet showed same performance after recovery from quench.

A large bore magnet coil wound without turn to turn insulation was fabricated and cooled down to 10 K by conduction cooling. The coil has room temperature bore of 102 mm in diameter and consists of 22 double pancakes wound with 2G HTS conductor on aluminium alloy bobbin. Tests for 22 double pancake coils were performed at 77 K for individual single DPC, coupled 2 DPCs, 4 DPCs, 8 DPCs and 22 DPCs. Tested DPCs were connected by splice joint and assembled coil structure was installed to the vacuum cryostat with radiation shield and cooled down to 10 K for 28 h. The coil generate 4.1 T when operating current ramped to 200 A by 0.1 A/s without quench. Test results agreed well with the designed performance showing field homogeneity of 0.021% for radial axis and 0.056% for vertical axis in 10 mm DSV at 4.1073 T. The magnet showed quench at 210 A when ramping rate was 0.15 A/s at 10 K. The results showed that without turn to turn insulation winding method is a possible option for making compact magnet coil with sufficient structural integrity, thermal and electrical stability at the same time.

A conduction-cooled 3 T 100 mm winding bore multi-width and no-insulation (NI) all-REBCO magnet was designed, constructed and tested at 13 K. The magnet consists of a stack of double pancake (DP) coils wound with, for the first time, REBCO tapes having a 1 μm thick layer of stainless steel, named 'metallic cladding', that surrounds the tapes in a hermetic way to substantially reduce the NI charging delay. After construction, the magnet was cooled down to the target operating temperature of 13 K using a two-stage pulse-tube cryo-cooler. During charging–discharging tests up to 200 A, magnetic center field, voltage of each DP coil, power supply current, and magnet temperature were monitored. The charging time constant of the magnet was measured to be about 10.1 s, 13 times smaller than that of its NI counterpart. The magnet experienced, due to an unexpected power supply trip, a sudden discharge at a peak coil current density of 353 A mm2, yet it survived without any degradation. The results demonstrated strong potential of the metallic cladding NI-REBCO magnet for significant charging-delay reduction and self-protecting operation.

A 26 T 35 mm winding diameter all-GdBa2Cu3O (GdBCO) magnet was designed by the MIT Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory, and constructed and tested by the SuNAM Co., Ltd. With the multi-width (MW) no-insulation (NI) high temperature superconductor (HTS) winding technique incorporated, the magnet is highly compact; its overall diameter and height are 172 and 327 mm, respectively. It consists of a stack of 26 NI double pancake coils wound with MW GdBCO tapes in five different widths ranged 4.1–8.1 mm. In a bath of liquid nitrogen at 77 K, the magnet had a charging time constant of 16 min due to the intrinsic NI characteristics. In liquid helium at 4.2 K, the magnet generated a 26.4 T field at the center, a record high in magnetic fields from all-HTS magnets. The results demonstrate a strong potential of MW-NI GdBCO magnets for direct current high-field applications.

A conduction-cooled high-temperature superconducting magnet using 2nd generation HTS wire, which has a room-temperature bore 102 mm in diameter, has been developed and tested up to 3 T with the operating temperature of 20 K. The magnet consists of 22 double pancake coils (DPCs) with an inner diameter of 140 mm and outer diameter of 182 mm. Twenty-two double pancake coils were tested separately at 77 K for checking the IV-curve. Selected DPCs were resistively connected by HTS tape (Splice joint), and an assembled magnet coil with the size of 182.5 mm diameter and 242 mm in height was conduction cooled by a two-stage Gifford-McMahon cryo-cooler to 20 K. Current, voltage, and field strength were measured as a function of time with various ramping up and down conditions. The resulting performance data of the assembled magnet agreed well with the expectation from FEM simulation. The aimed field homogeneity of 0.1% in 10 mm diameter sphere volume was proved when operating current was 141.6 A at 20 K with central magnetic field intensity of 2.9975 T by hall sensor. The magnetic flux density at center showed nonlinear dependence with ramping current within the range of 0.05 A/sec ~0.15 A/sec because of charging delay. However, saturated magnetic flux density showed the same value of 2.9975 T regardless of ramping rate.