Modelling and analysis of quench in the 15-kA HTS conductor

Abstract

High Temperature Superconductors (HTS) are very promising materials for possible application in future fusion magnets, with significant R&D progress on HTS conductors in recent years. However, since geometric and thermo-physical characteristics of HTS and LTS conductors differ significantly, some doubts have arisen if the approaches successfully used in numerical simulations of the thermal–hydraulic behavior of LTS conductors would be sufficient also for HTS, particularly in cases when fast transient processes (such as e.g. quench) are considered. In order to provide data for better understanding of the quench phenomenon in HTS conductors as well as for testing different numerical approaches and proper tuning of the numerical codes, a dedicated experimental campaign (Quench Experiment) was carried out at the SULTAN test facility within the international collaboration between the EUROfusion consortium and China. Our present study is a part of the work on analysis and interpretation of the data collected during this experiment. Simulations of the chosen experimental run were performed using two THEA models with different levels of complexity. Uncertain model parameters (thermal resistances and copper RRR) were explored across a wide range. Our goal was to identify the possibly simple model that accurately reproduces the experimental results.