Electrical-Thermal-Structural Coupled Finite Element Model of High Temperature Superconductor for Resistive Type Fault Current Limiters.

A multi-physics finite element model of high-temperature superconductors (HTS) will be presented in this article. The electrical-thermal model is mainly based on Maxwell's equation and basic heat transfer equation to calculate the temperature propagation along the length of the superconducting tapes. According to the calculated temperature profile during quench, the surface thermal stress of the tape is obtained by a structural model. This model can be used to evaluate the degradation of tape performance due to the surface thermal stress, and the results can be used to minimize these effects in the SFCL system. The proposed model is used to investigate the uneven tape, the thickness of the copper layer and YBCO layer which is non-uniform. Methods of smoothing the degradation effect by adding auxiliary fixed points to the tape and changing the basic thickness of copper layer are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]