Cold test and numerical analysis of the compact 2G HTS power cable

Abstract

The R&D project is underway in the Russian Cable Institute to reduce mass and dimensions of HTS cables for such applications as electrical aircrafts or ship propulsion systems. Such compact cables should have minimized diameter compared to other co-axial HTS cables developed before. Recently we developed and tested the compact cable prototype with three layers in the core and two layers in the shield. As continuation of this project we developed the new cable prototype with four HTS layers in the core and two layers in the shield. Narrower 2G HTS tape with 3 mm width has been used for this cable. Numerical optimization of the cable with analysis of manufacturing errors influence on current distribution has been performed. The method to produce small diameter cable with uniform current distribution has been suggested. The cold test of the compact cable manufactured has been performed at the Russian Cable Institute test facility. We demonstrated that we can control the homogeneous current distributions in a compact cable with the inner diameter of the core ~10 mm and the outer diameter of the shield ~20 mm. AC loss measurements in the compact cable demonstrated that they are close to those in previously tested HTS 2G cables with larger diameters.