Ten MVA air-gap armature winding: thermal, structural and dielectric results

This paper describes the armature winding built as part of MIT's 10 MVA superconducting generator project. The winding has a helical winding form, is an air-gap winding having no iron teeth in the active region, employs a limited voltage gradient insulation scheme and is cooled by an insulating fluid. Structurally, the winding employs bonded joints between the conductors and structural tubes, which are of filament-wound fiber-reinforced plastic. Preliminary tests indicated that thermal performance of this winding was satisfactory. On the other hand, the winding suffered a catastrophic insulation failure after only a short time at high voltage. The resulting fault gave the structural system of the armature winding (and the rest of the machine) a good test. In this paper we review the major aspects of the design of the winding, describe the thermal tests and then tell of the insulation failure. We can, at best, speculate about the cause of that failure, but we can, on the basis of this experience, make recommendations for further development of machines of this type.