Magnetometry diagnostics of defects in high-temperature superconducting tapes in a gradient magnetic field

A new technique for contactless magnetometric determination of the local critical current in high-temperature superconducting tapes is proposed. In contrast to conventional approaches, where currents in a superconductor are induced by a uniform magnetic field of an external source, in our variant the tape is magnetized by a series of bipolar permanent magnets. It is shown that, for solving a number of technical problems of defect diagnostics, the proposed approach is more effective than those used earlier. Two variants of diagnostics are discussed. The first variant is intended for express diagnostics of local defects (first of all, transverse cracks) in a separate tape and in a tape stack and the second variant is developed for the case of a smooth critical current variation in a separate tape. The proposed method can significantly improve the accuracy of determining the local critical current density.