The mechanism of thermal runaway due to continuous local disturbances in the YBCO-coated conductor coil winding

Though YBCO coils are stable against transient disturbances such as conductor motion, they suffer from thermal runaway at a current below the coil critical current due to continuous local disturbances attributed to partial degradation of the conductor in the coil winding. Continuous heat generation in the degraded layer induces thermal runaway in adjacent layers; thermal runaway does not occur in the degraded layer spontaneously due to the small n index of the degraded YBCO-coated conductor. The thermal runaway current depends on the cooling conditions of the winding. For a paraffin-impregnated YBCO coil under quasi-adiabatic conditions, the thermal runaway current is far below the coil critical current, while it is close to the coil critical current in the case of a dry-wound coil. The permissible temperature rise following a thermal runaway for YBCO conductors in the degraded layer is demonstrated to be 340 K. If the YBCO coils are operated at a temperature below 20 K, the current density, typically 600-800 A mm(-2), is much higher than that at 77 K. Therefore, the time interval between thermal runaway initiation and the melting temperature becomes less than 0.5 s, posing a difficult problem for protection; i.e., thermal runaway due to continuous local disturbances is hazardous to the safe operation of high current density YBCO coils.