Intelligent Probability Estimation of Quenches Caused by Weak Points in High-Temperature Superconducting Tapes

Abstract

Fluctuations in the critical current along the length of high-temperature superconducting (HTS) tapes manufactured in the form of coated conductors is a common manufacturing phenomenon. These fluctuations originate in the generation of weak points through the length of HTS tapes that may cause quenching later. By means of the propagation of quenches in HTS tapes, the reliability, stability, and the performance of the device and the system that contain HTS tapes could be seriously degraded. In this study, an artificial intelligence technique based on artificial neural networks (ANN) was proposed to estimate the probability of quenches in HTS tapes caused by weak points. For this purpose, six different HTS tapes were considered with different widths, total thicknesses, and thicknesses of sub-layers. Then, for each one of these tapes, different operating conditions were considered, where the operating temperature changed from 40 K to 80 K, in 1 K steps. Under each operating temperature, different operating currents were considered from 50% to 100% of tape critical current. All of these resulted in more than 5000 different data points. Then, for each of these data points, analytical modelling was performed to provide initial inputs and outputs for the ANN model. It should be noted that the performed simulations were conducted based on an analytical method that was experimentally validated in the literature. After that, a sensitivity analysis was conducted to select the hyperparameters and structure of the ANN-based model. The last step was to take advantage of the trained model, as a function in the MATLAB software package to estimate the probability of quenches in different case studies. The significant feature of the proposed model is the capability for estimating the probability of quenches under different operating temperatures and currents for different types of HTS tapes.