Design and preliminary tests of a twin coil HTS SMES for pulse power operation

Abstract

The design of a twin coil 2 × 200 kJ–1 MW pulse power high temperature superconductor (HTS) superconductingmagnetic energy storage (SMES) demonstrator is presented. Its aim is to testat small scale various possibilities of electromagnetic launcher powering. Theforeseen operation modes include high voltage discharge in power capacitors,sequential discharges of identical energies from two coupled coils, and XRAM currentmultiplication. Special attention was paid to the arrangement of the coils for the energiesdischarged to be equal. The coils are cooled by conduction from three cryocoolers;the thermal design was optimized in order to maintain the coils around 15 K inspite of the high number of current leads required for XRAM operation (eight).Preliminary tests of the demonstrator are also presented, showing that the thermal andelectrical characteristics are in very good agreement with the design objectives.