A flux pump driven non-soldering closed-loop HTS magnet and its electromagnetic-thermal semi-analytical modelling method

Abstract

We propose a new flux pump driven non-soldering closed-loop (NSCL) high temperature superconducting (HTS) magnet free of any soldering joints throughout the magnet for persistent current mode (PCM) operation. All the superconducting parts of the magnet are wound directly with HTS closed-loop ring split from an 8 mm REBCO tape using our new cutting scheme free of any soldering requirements. The magnet contains two single-pancake coils connected in series forming a closed circuit through two parallel bridge branches. Two thermal switches set on the two bridge branches control the on–off of the two bridges. A copper coil with iron core installed around one of the bridges is employed as the flux pump to drive the HTS magnet. An electromagnetic-thermal semi-analytical modelling method is proposed to analyse the pumping process by which the transport current in the magnet is calculated. The theoretical limit equation of the saturation current is improved as well. The proposed method can predict the current of the NSCL HTS magnet during the pumping process and provide results that are close to experiments. Experiments verify both the feasibility of the proposed flux pump driven NSCL HTS magnet and the modelling method. The results show that the NSCL HTS magnet works well in the PCM, which provides inspiration to the design of PCM operation of high field HTS magnets. The proposed modelling method also helps guide the design of different forms of HTS magnets and the flux pumps driving them.