Thermal and Electrical Characteristics of Hollow Former With Fault Current Limiting Function for Superconducting Power Cable

Abstract

A superconducting fault current limiting cable (SFCLC) with a hollow former is composed of various elements with different electrical and thermal properties, including liquid nitrogen inside the former. This type of cable can be used to mitigate the impact of short-circuit faults. This paper introduces a computational model that combines thermal and electrical behavior to investigate the thermal and electrical characteristics of SFCLCs according to the composition of a hollow former. To verify the computational model, a superconducting power cable with a hollow former was fabricated and a fault current test was performed. Good agreement was obtained between the calculation results obtained from the proposed computational model and the fault current test results. In addition, using the proposed computational model, the relationship between increases in temperature and limitations on current was analyzed for each configuration of the former according to the length of the cable and the duration of the fault. The characteristic analysis provides information on the hollow former composition that most effectively limits the fault current, depending on the length of the cable and the duration of the fault. The results can be used to determine the material and dimension of the hollow former for SFCLCs design.