Assessment of alternative design schemes to reduce the edge losses in HTS powertransmission cables made of coated conductors

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the effectiveness of alternative designs to reduce the AC lossesof high temperature superconducting (HTS) power transmission cables. The idea behindthese designs is to undermine the edge effect, which is one of the main factorscontributing to AC losses in HTS power cables made of coated tapes. The edgeeffect, which arises from the presence of gaps between the tapes, results in largenormal components of magnetic field near the edges of the tapes and in turnsleads to a current distribution with higher density near the edges. To perform ourinvestigation we use a numerical technique developed in our previous work whichallows us to consider the helical configuration of the tapes. Through numericalsimulations we assess the effectiveness of two overlapped designs, i.e. a cyclic overlappeddesign and an anticyclic overlapped design, in reduction of AC losses in singlelayer HTS power cables made of coated tapes. Simulation results show that AClosses can be reduced by about 70% as compared with a typical single layer cable.