4D simulation of quench behavior in quasi-isotropic superconducting cable of stacked REBCO tapes considering thermal contact resistance

Abstract

The quench characteristic is a critical issue for the application of superconducting cable. In order to study the process of the quench behavior in the cable accurately, a four-dimensional (4D) quench model for quasi-isotropic superconducting cable was developed and presented, in this paper. We first consider that the materials of the cable are in perfect thermal contact with the neighboring ones, and the radial temperature field and current redistribution at different time and different axial distances during the quench process are obtained. Then, thermal contact resistance (TCR) is considered. In addition, the minimum quench energy (MQE) and the quench propagation velocity (QPV) in axial direction of the two cases are investigated and compared. The results show that the maximum temperature of the heating area (Tmax) is higher and QPVs are greater than the case without considering TCR. In addition, there is temperature gradient in the cross section of the cable. Finally we evaluate the sensitivity of thermal stability for the quasi-isotropic cable on the different values of TCR and positions where TCR is inserted. It is concluded that TCR among REBCO tapes has little effect on MQE and QPV of quasi-isotropic superconducting cable. The results are useful for the application of the quasi-isotropic superconducting cable immersed in liquid nitrogen, and this numerical model can also be used for simulating the quench process of other superconducting cables or conductors.