Characteristics of Round and Extracted Strands of ${\hbox{Nb}}_{3}\hbox{Al}$ Rutherford Cable

Abstract

Long Nb3Al strands with copper stabilizer are promising for future high field accelerator magnets. A 1.2 kilometer Nb3Al strand with Cu stabilizer was fabricated at the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan. Using this strand a 30 meter Cu stabilized Nb3Al Rutherford cable was made for the first time by a collaboration of NIMS and Fermilab. The Nb3Al strands extracted from cable with a relatively low packing factor showed almost no Jc degradation. But the extracted strands from the highly compacted cable showed some degradation in both Jc and n value, which may be caused by local separation of the copper stabilizer. Still, its Jc degradation is lower than that of typical Nb3Sn strands. The current limit due to magnetic instability in low field is about 500 A at 4.2 K. The magnetization of the strands, which was measured with balanced coils at 4.2 K, showed large flux jumps, usually around 1.5 T. This value is much larger than the Bc2 (4.2 K) of the Nb matrix, which is around 0.4 Tesla. The magnetic instability of the Nb3Al strand at low field is not completely understood, but it might be explained by the superconducting coupling current through the Nb matrix.