Effect of winding direction on four-layer HTS power transmission cable Original Research Article

A high temperature superconductor (HTS) power transmission cable is usually made of several layers of helically wound superconductor tapes. The current distribution among the conductor tapes is controlled mainly by pitches and winding directions of the layers, because the inductance of the layer is determined by the pitch and the winding direction. Two winding directions––right and left––are possible for each layer, and we can list up many possible combinations of winding directions. If we choose a good combination we can find the optimal pitches and make an even current distribution. However, with a bad combination of the winding direction, it is almost impossible to find a solution. We developed a software code to calculate the currents of the layers. With this software we studied the effect of the winding direction on a four-layer cable by a statistical way. A brief description of the software, calculation results and discussions will be presented.