Stability of force-cooled superconductors Part I: Theory

✍ Scribed by D. Junghans

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1983
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 741 KB
• Volume: 23
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0011-2275
• DOI: 10.1016/0011-2275(83)90024-3

✦ Synopsis

Due to the inherently transient behaviour of force cooled conductors there are no simple stability criteria. It is however possible to define a critical energy and to take it as a measure of stability. The critical energy is the minimum energy of a disturbance necessary to cause a quench of the conductor. The disturbances are characterized by their length and duration. The critical energy is a complicated function of conductor geometry, operating conditions and disturbance parameters. For the theoretical calculation of the critical energy, the superconductor was approximated by a one dimensional mode/. The thermal behaviour of the conductor is then described by a system of six partial differential equations. The computer program L ONSA was developed for the numerical integration of this system. Experimentally, the critical energy of two test conductors was measured over a wide range of operating conditions and disturbance parameters. By comparing the measured values of the critical energy with those calculated numerically, it was shown that this system of differential equations is a complete and quantitatively correct description of the behaviour of a force cooled superconductor.