Designing HTS coils for magnetic circuits

Abstract

We discuss some of the main considerations involved in the design of HTS coils to operate in liquid nitrogen and provide ampere-turns for magnetic circuits in general, and then in particular for a small-scale electromagnetic (i.e. attractive) maglev demonstrator. The most important factor affecting design is the sensitive and strongly anisotropic dependence of HTS tape's critical current on magnetic field. Any successful design must limit the field in the windings, especially components perpendicular to the tape's surface (radial components in the case of solenoids), to acceptably low levels such that local critical currents nowhere fall below the operating current. This factor is relevant to the construction of HTS coils for all applications. A second important factor is that the presence of an iron magnetic circuit can greatly alter the flux distribution within the coils from that found when they are in free space. FE modelling has been used to calculate accurate field profiles in proposed designs for comparison with short simple I/sub c/(B) data. We present a design for a maglev demonstrator, illustrating how some of the problems, in particular the reduction of radial field components, may be addressed, and describe its predicted performance.