Measurements of the transverse resistance and eddy current losses in a cable-in-conduit conductor

In the case of plasma current interruption in tokamaks, the conductor of toroidial field (TF) coils experiences the action of a pulsed decreasing magnetic field (PDMF) parallel to the conductor’s axis. To estimate the stability of a cable-in-conduit conductor against the PDMF, a new experimental method to study different types of losses is applied. This method exploits a high sensitivity of temperature and gas pressure to input energy in a closed volume. It allows one to measure hysteresis losses with a rather high accuracy (provided that the rate of change of the PDMF is low) and a sum of hysteresis losses and eddy current losses (when the rate of change of the PDMF is high). An experimental setup to measure the transverse (circumferential) resistance and losses has been developed at the National Research Centre Kurchatov Institute. A Russianmade Nb3Sn conductor intended for the TF coils of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor is subjected to a PDMF with different amplitudes and characteristic times. The electromagnetic time constant and the transverse resistivity of the conductor are experimentally determined. The maximum temperature of strands under the action of the PDMF is calculated.