Analysis of Nonuniform Contact Resistivity Distribution on No-Insulation HTS Racetrack Coil

This article presents a numerical analysis and experiment to investigate a contact resistivity distribution of a no-insulation (NI) high-temperature superconductor (HTS) racetrack coil. Since the racetrack coil consists of straight and curved sections with continuously varing curvatures, the local inhomogeneity of contact resistivity can occur. We adopt a partial element equivalent circuit (PEEC) method to investigate this inhomogeneity. A 50-turn NI HTS single pancake test coil is fabricated to figure out the discrepancy of contact resistivity, and the coil is charged up to 100 A in a liquid nitrogen bath. Voltage profiles between inserted voltage taps and the magnetic fields at the coil center are measured and compared with two simulation cases: 1) uniform contact resistivity; 2) nonuniform contact resistivity distribution. The results indicated that nonuniform distribution of contact …