Investigation of thermal and electrical stabilities of a GdBCO coil using grease as an insulation material for practical superconducting applications

Abstract

This paper presents the effects of thermal grease on the electrical and thermal characteristics of GdBCO pancake coils, observed through charge-discharge, sudden discharge, over-current, and thermal quench testing. In charge-discharge and sudden discharge tests, a coil using thermal grease as an insulation material demonstrated faster charging/discharging rates compared to a coil without turn-to-turn insulation. In the case of over-current tests, the coil using thermal grease exhibited the highest electrical stability. Furthermore, thermal quench testing showed the coil employing thermal grease to possess superior thermal characteristics, with rapid cooling and low temperature rise. Overall, the use of thermal grease as an insulation material may be a potential solution to the problems observed with the existing insulation materials, possessing fast charging/discharging rates with superior thermal and electrical stabilities.

A parallel co-wound no-insulation REBCO pancake coil for improving charging delays

“…To deal with the problem, different methods have been proposed. A straightforward way is to increase the turn-to-turn contact resistance, including cowinding CCs with metal layers [20][21][22][23], partially co-winding Kapton tapes [24], coating thermal greases on the surfaces of CCs [25][26][27]. Recently, using V 2 O 3 as an insulation layer has been proposed [28,29].…”