Performance of pancake coils of parallel co-wound Ag/BSCCO tape conductors in static and ramped magnetic fields

Critical currents are reported for several Ag/BSCCO single-pancake coils in static magnetic fields ranging from 0 to 5 T and temperatures from 4.2 K to 105 K. The sample cells were co-wound of one to six tape conductors in parallel. Since the closed loops formed in such an arrangement could lead to eddy current heating or instability in changing fields, one of the coils was also tested in helium gas, in fields ramped at rates of up to 1.5 T/s. For these quasi-adiabatic tests, at each temperature the transport current was set just below the critical value for a preset static field of 3.3 or 4.9 T. The field was then rapidly ramped down to zero, held for 20 see, and then ramped back up to the original value. The maximum observed temperature transient of about 1.7 K occurred at 9 K, for a field change of 4.75 T. Transients became negligible when immersed in liquid helium. Above 30 K, the transients were below 1 K. These results give confidence that parallel co-wound HTSC coils are stable in a rapidly-ramped magnetic field, without undue eddy current heating.<>