Power Switches Utilizing Superconducting Material for Accelerator Magnets

Stephen A. March, Amalia Ballarino, Yifeng Yang

Abstract—Power switches that utilize superconducting material find application in superconducting systems. They can be used for the protection of magnets as a replacement for warm DC breakers, as well as for the replacement of cold diodes. This paper presents a comparison of switches made of various superconducting materials having transport currents of up to 600 A and switching times of the order of milliseconds. The switches operate in the temperature range 4.2 - 77 K and utilize stainless steel clad YBCO tape and MgB2 tape with a nickel, copper, iron matrix. Results from simulations and tests are reported.

Index Terms—Critical current, HTS, inductive heating, resistive heating

Manuscript received July 31, 2008.
S. A. March is with CERN, European Organization for Nuclear Research, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland, on secondment from University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, (e-mail: stephen.alfred.march@cern.ch).
A. Ballarino is with CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, 1211 Geneva 23, CH (e-mail: amalia.ballarino@cern.ch).
Y. Yang is with the Institute of Cryogenics, School of Engineering Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, (e-mail: y.yang@soton.ac.uk).

Full Text, PDF