An improved design of an inductive fault current limiter based on a superconducting cylinder

TL;DR

This paper presents an improved design for a superconducting inductive fault current limiter, optimizing winding placement to reduce AC losses and enhance performance, supported by theoretical analysis and laboratory experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a novel winding configuration for the superconducting cylinder that improves efficiency and reduces losses, validated through both theory and experiments.

Findings

Reduced AC losses in the superconducting cylinder

Increased activation current for the limiter

Decreased inductive reactance in normal operation

Abstract

The paper deals with basic designs of a fault current limiter of the transformer type which differ each other by the mutual location of a primary winding and a superconducting short-circuited cylinder. Theoretical study of the main parameters of the different designs is performed in the framework of the critical state model and shows that the most effective is a design in which the primary winding is divided to two sections with equal turn numbers. The sections are placed inside and outside of the cylinder and connected in series. Such arrangement of the windings leads to a substantial reduction of AC losses in the superconducting cylinder, an increase of the activation current and a decrease of the inductive reactance in the normal regime of a protected circuit. The experimental results obtained on the laboratory model with a BSSCO cylinder confirm the theoretical predictions.