A novel method of flat YBCO rings development for shield-type superconducting fault current limiters fabrication

The application of flat superconductor rings has been investigated in the structure of inductive shield-type high temperature superconducting fault current limiters, HTc-SFCL. A laboratory scale inductive shield-type HTc-SFCL has been designed and fabricated using fiat superconductor rings. The fabrication process has been fully presented. YBCO powder has been used for the fabrication of superconductor rings. This fabrication process, being quite innovative, is introduced completely. The method of the trapped field measurement has been used for the critical current density measurement of the fabricated superconductor rings. The device with nominal current of 2 A was tested in a 30 V circuit. The SFCL successfully limited the fault currents of up to 10 times the nominal current to an approximately fixed value of 3 A. The voltage current characteristic of the fabricated prototype has also been obtained and has shown compatibility with the fault current limitation results. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.