Abstract
AC loss is an important issue in the design of high-$T_c$ superconducting power cables which consist of a number of Bi-2223 tapes wound on a former. In the cables, the tapes have different critical currents intrinsically. And they are electrically connected to each other and current leads. In this work we have prepared a conductor composed of three Bi-2223 tapes with different critical currents. The critical current characteristics in the conductor have experimentally investigated. The results show that for uniform current distributions the conductor's critical current is proportional to the critical current of the Bi-2223 tape to which a voltage lead is attached. However it depends on the current non-uniformity parameter in the conductor rather than the tape's critical currents for nonuniform current distributions.