Study on the intrinsic thermal stability of anisotropic thin film superconductors with a line heat source

Abstract

This paper presents an analytical method to investigate the intrinsic thermal stability of anisotropic thin film superconductors. A three-dimensional analysis is introduced to consider an instantaneous release of energy in the form of a finite length line source. Through the transformation of coordinates, an isotropic form of heat conduction equation is obtained. To solve this initial and boundary value problem, the method of separation of variables is employed, which gives an exact solution. The results of limiting cases of this study are compared with those of two previous investigations. Results from this study also show that the anisotropy of highly oriented films of superconductors has a great impact on the thermal stability. The stability parameter also depends on the location of the line source, the length of the line source, the magnitude of disturbance energy, the Biot number and the aspect ratio in the plane of thin film and normal to it.