• Progress in Superconductivity and Cryogenics
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.61-69
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• 2021

This paper presents the analysis and experiment results on the electrical and thermal characteristics of metal insulation (MI) REBCO racetrack coil, which was wound with stainless steel (SS) tape between turn-to-turn layers, under rotating magnetic field and conduction cooling system. Although the field windings of superconducting rotating machine are designed to operate on a direct current, they may be subjected to external magnetic field due to the unsynchronized armature windings during electrical or mechanical load fluctuations. The field windings show the voltage and magnetic field fluctuations and the critical current reduction when they are exposed to an external magnetic field. Moreover, the cryogenic cooling conditions are also identified as the factors that affect the electrical and thermal characteristics of the HTS coil because the characteristic resistance changes according to the cryogenic cooling conditions. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the effect of external magnetic field on the electrical and thermal characteristics of MI-SS racetrack coil for further development reliable HTS field windings of superconducting rotating machine. First, the major components of the experiment test (i.e., HTS racetrack coil construction, armature winding of 75 kW class induction motor, and conduction cooling system) were fabricated and assembled. Then, the MI racetrack coil was performed under liquid nitrogen bath and conduction cooling conditions to estimate the key parameters (i.e., critical current, time constant, and characteristic resistance) for the test coil in the steady state operation. Further, the test coil was charged to the target value under conduction cooling of 35 K then exposed to the rotating magnetic field, which was generated by three phrase armature windings of 75 kW class induction motor, to investigate the electrical and thermal characteristics during the transient state.