Cooling cycle test of DC superconducting power transmission cable

Abstract

We constructed a test stand of a 20 m DC superconducting power transmission cable in Chubu University in 2006. The cable uses thirty-nine Bi-2223 tapes. Four cycles of a cooling and current-feeding test have been carried out after the construction of the test stand. The cable suffered rapid temperature decrease of 20 K/hour at the daytime during the cooling process by cold nitrogen gas and liquid to the liquid nitrogen temperature. Nineteen HTS tapes in the cable are electrically isolated from each other, and the superconducting characteristics of these HTS tapes can be measured separately. At every cooling cycle, critical current of these isolated HTS tapes were measured. Consequently, no reduction of the critical current characteristics was observed through the 4 cooling cycles. We considered that this endurance of the cable against the cooling cycle is due to unfixed cable end structure of the cable, and that the cable was free from the mechanical stress in spite of the 6 cm shrinkage of the cable length under the low temperature.