CICC manufacturing technology as a factor affecting Tcs stability during
full-size testing
Abstract
The test results of the ITER toroidal field conductors demonstrated a
decrease of the current sharing temperature (Tcs) with
an increase in the number of electromagnetic cycles in general. This is
associating with several factors. One of them is the superconducting
Nb3Sn filaments cracking and another one is the
redistribution of the relative deformation of the Nb3Sn
strands under Lorentz forces. Despite these factors, some conductors
have shown the absence or significantly less degradation of
Tcs during electromagnetic cycling. This article
considers another possible reason for a more stable conductors
Tcs behavior, namely, the local compression of
Nb3Sn wires in the cross section of a conductor. In this
article presents the results of a quantitative analysis
Nb3Sn superconducting filaments cracking of strands
extracted from a conductor that has passed electromagnetic cycling and
the model of a conductor compaction, as well as calculation results
based on this model are presented also.