The shielding-current-induced field is a serious concern for the applications of coated conductors to magnets. The striation of the coated conductor is one of the countermeasures, but it is effective only after the decay of the coupling current, which is characterised with the coupling time constant. In a non-twisted striated coated conductor, the coupling time constant is determined primarily by its length and the transverse resistance between superconductor filaments, because the coupling current could flow along its entire length. We measured and numerically calculated the frequency dependences of magnetisation losses in striated and copper-plated coated conductors with various lengths and their stacks at 77 K and determined their coupling time constants. Stacked conductors simulate the turns of a conductor wound into a pancake coil. Coupling time constants are proportional to the square of the conductor length. Stacking striated coated conductors increases the coupling time constants because the coupling currents in stacked conductors are coupled to one another magnetically to increase the mutual inductances for the coupling current paths. We carried out the numerical electromagnetic field analysis of conductors wound into pancake coils and determined their coupling time constants. They can be explained by the length dependence and mutual coupling effect observed in stacked straight conductors. Even in pancake coils with practical numbers of turns, i.e. conductor lengths, the striation is effective to reduce the shielding-current-induced fields for some dc applications.

One of critical issues for HTS transformers is achieving sufficiently low AC loss in the windings. Therefore, accurate prediction of AC loss is critical for the HTS transformer applications. In this work, we present AC loss simulation results employing the H-formulation for a 1 MVA 3-Phase HTS transformer. The high voltage (HV) windings are composed of 24 double pancakes per phase wound with 4 mmwide YBCO wire. Each double pancake coil has 38 ¼ turns. The low voltage (LV) windings are 20 turn single-layer solenoid windings wound with 15/5 (15 strands of 5 mm width) Roebel cable per phase. The numerical method was first verified by comparing the numerical and experimental AC loss results for two coil assemblies composed of two and six double pancake coils (DPCs). The numerical AC loss calculated for the transformer was compared with the measured AC loss as well as the numerical result obtained using the minimum magnetic energy variation (MMEV) method. The numerical AC loss result in this work and experimental result as well as the numerical result using MMEV at the rated current agree to within 20%. Further simulations were carried out to explore the dependence of the AC loss on the gap between the turns of the LV winding. The minimum AC loss at rated current in the 1 MVA HTS transformer appears when the gap between turns is approximately 2.1 mm turn gap in the LV winding. This is due to the change of relative heights between the HV and LV windings which results in optimal radial magnetic field cancellation. The same numerical method can be applied to calculate AC loss in larger rating HTS transformers.

Electromagnetic field analyses were carried out to study the influence of coated-conductor magnetisation, i.e. the screening (shielding) current, on the field quality of a dipole magnet in a rotating gantry for hadron cancer therapy. The analyses were made on the cross section of a cosine-theta dipole magnet in a rotating gantry for carbon ions, which generated 2.90 T of magnetic field. The temporal profile (temporal variation) of the magnet current was determined based on the actual excitation schemes of the magnets in the rotating gantry. The experimentally determined superconducting property of a coated conductor was considered, and we calculated the temporal evolutions of the current-density distributions in all the turns of coated conductors in the magnet. From the obtained current-density distributions, we calculated the multipole components of the magnetic field and evaluated the field quality of the magnet. The deviation in the dipole component from its designed value was up to approximately 25 mT, which was approximately 1% of the designed maximum dipole component. Its variation between repeated excitations was approximately 0.03%, and it drifted approximately 0.06% in 10 s. Some compensation schemes might be required to counteract such influence of magnetisation on the dipole component. Meanwhile, the higher multipole components were small, stable, and sufficiently reproducible for a magnet in rotating gantries, i.e. |b3| ∼ 1.1 × 10−3 and |Δb3| ∼ 0.2 × 10−3 in 10 s.

A single pancake coil wound with a copper-plated multifilament coated conductor, with four filaments, was put in a cusp magnetic field, and the magnetic field was measured near the coil at 30 K. A similar experiment was performed by using another reference single pancake coil wound with a monofilament coated conductor. Numerical electromagnetic field analyses of these coils were carried out, and the calculated shielding current-induced fields (SCIFs) were compared with the measured ones in both coils. The temporal behaviour of the calculated SCIF in the coil wound with the four-filament coated conductor was also compared with a series of exponential components, in which a coupling time constant extrapolated from short sample experiments was used as the time constant of the primary component. Current distributions in the coated conductors wound into the pancake coils were visualised. In particular, the temporal behaviours of the current distributions in the four-filament coated conductor and their influence on the SCIF were discussed.