Speaker
Description
There is presently a lot of effort to design and build magnetic confinement fusion machines using high temperature superconductors (HTS), perhaps most notably with rare-earth barium copper oxide (ReBCO) tapes. One such multi-ReBCO tape conductor is Conductor-On-Round-Core (CORC®). Of course, any conductor will need to be bent and deformed, in order to meet a given magnet’s design criteria, which thus risks a reduction in conductor performance. Therefore, we have investigated the critical current (Ic) reduction of two CORC® conductors with a high number of tapes each as a function of two-dimensional (2D) bending. The conductors were measured as-received (i.e., nominally straight) and subsequently bent around formers with ever decreasing radii. At each bending radius, the Ic was measured at 77 K in liquid nitrogen and in self-field. The conductors were then carefully restraightened and remeasured to measure their Ic recoverability. A cross-comparison of the Ic response of these conductors to bending is made and the ramifications discussed.
