Quench Localization for 2G High-Temperature Superconductor Tape Using Acoustic Reflectometry

Abstract

Quench localization is one of the most important aspects in identifying the performance limitations of high-temperature superconductor (HTS) devices and applications. In order to localize the quench and improve spatial resolution, an acoustic-based quench detection technique using shear-horizontal waves and chirplet transform is proposed in this paper. To verify the performance of the proposed method, acoustic signals are collected by the shear piezoelectric transducers mounted on the REBCO tape, and the heating points are localized via the time-frequency cross-correlation value and baseline subtraction method. This work proves heating points can be detected and localized with a resolution of better than 1 %. It is expected that the proposed method can improve the quench detection and localization for accelerators and fusion power applications.