Experimental Study on the Accuracy of the Proposed LFAC Method for Measuring the Contact Resistance of NI HTS Coils

Abstract

No-insulation (NI) winding technique provides high thermal stability, and the turn-to-turn contact resistance is an important factor to characterize the thermal stability and charging delay of NI HTS magnets. Therefore, a method that can accurately measure the contact resistance between turns of NI HTS magnets was required. We have previously proposed a turn-to-turn contact resistance measurement method using a low frequency AC current. The proposed low-frequency-AC-current (LFAC) can accurately evaluate the contact resistance between turns only when the whole AC current flows in the radial direction of the NI HTS pancake coil (there is almost no coil inductance). In addition, the AC current flowing in the radial direction needs to have a uniform current distribution in the plane of winding wire (REBCO wire). Therefore, in this study, an experimental study was conducted to prove the reliability of the proposed LFAC method. In the experiment, three NI test coils with different winding tension (0.5, 1 and 2 kg) were prepared, and four pickup coils were placed under each test coil to evaluate the radial current bypass characteristics. The contact resistance of each test coil was decreased from a few percent to several tens of percent by multiple cooling cycles from room temperature to liquid nitrogen temperature. Although it is a qualitative observation, the validity of the LFAC method was proved by the prepared pickup coils, and it was shown that even a small change of contact resistance in NI coils can be measured.