Numerical analysis of propagation of thermal disturbances in brass-stabilized REBCO tapes

An extensive characterization of commercially available High-Temperature Superconducting (HTS) REBCO tapes has been recently performed at KIT. The main thermo-physical properties of the tapes have been measured, and heat slug and quench propagation have been investigated in vacuum at LN2 temperature, using a resistive heater as driver and recording the voltage and temperature evolution after the pulse at several locations along the tapes. In this paper, we present a study of thermal disturbance propagation in a HTS tape with brass stabilizer. The experimental data are analyzed first, to identify the phenomena that influence heat propagation in the tape, and namely the heat loss to the sample holder and the non-ideal efficiency of the resistive heater. A numerical tool is then developed, which solves the 1D transient heat conduction equation in each layer of the tape and accounts for the thermal coupling between layers. The heat loss to the sample holder and the non-ideal efficiency of the resistive heater are taken into account in the model. A first validation of the thermal part of the model against an extended database of heat slug propagation tests is then performed: the comparison between simulation and experiment confirms the very good capability of the model to reproduce the measured temperature evolution. Finally, the results of the simulations of quench propagation are compared with experimental data, showing the capability of the model to reproduce the experiment, within the uncertainty in the input parameters.