3-D Numerical Simulations of Twisted Stacked Tape Cables

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive 3D numerical model for twisted stacked tape cables, enabling precise evaluation of electromagnetic interactions, critical current, and magnetization losses, crucial for high-field magnet applications.

Contribution

The authors developed a fully 3D model that accounts for twisted geometry and contact resistances, advancing the simulation capabilities for TSTC cables.

Findings

The model accurately predicts critical current and AC loss differences between twisted and straight tapes.

It successfully simulates current distribution in TSTC, aligning with experimental data.

The approach can be applied to various cable configurations with periodic symmetry.

Abstract

Different magnet applications require compact high current cables. Among the proposed solutions, the Twisted Stacked Tape Cable (TSTC) is easy to manufacture and has very high tape length usage efficiency. In this kind of cables the tapes are closely packed, so that their electromagnetic interaction is very strong and determines the overall performance of the cable. Numerical models are necessary tools to precisely evaluate this interaction and to predict the cable's behavior, e.g. in terms of effective critical current and magnetization currents. For this purpose, we developed a fully three-dimensional model of a TSTC, which not only takes into account the twisted geometry of these cables, but is also able to account for the contact resistances of the current terminations. The latter can have profound influence on the way the current is partitioned among the tapes, especially on short laboratory prototypes. In this paper, we first use the numerical model to compute the critical current and the magnetization AC loss of a twisted tape, showing the differences with the case of a straight tape. Then, we use it to calculate the current distribution in a TSTC cable, comparing the results with those experimentally obtained on a cable composed of four straight stacked tapes. The results show the ability of the model to simulate twisted conductors and constitutes a first step toward the simulation of TSTC in high-field magnet applications. The presented modeling approach is not restricted to the TSTC geometry, but may be used for any cable configuration with periodical translational symmetry.