Thesis

High-temperature superconducting ring magnet

Creator
Rights statement
Awarding institution
  • University of Strathclyde
Date of award
  • 2020
Thesis identifier
  • T15804
Person Identifier (Local)
  • 201867507
Qualification Level
Qualification Name
Department, School or Faculty
Abstract
  • Many electrical engineering applications such as motors and generators use permanent magnets which approximately account for 45% of their electricity consumption. The conventional magnets in use have a maximum field of around 1.5-2 T. High performance superconducting materials such as REBCO have facilitated the development of superconducting magnets. Superconducting bulk magnets and stacks of tapes have already demonstrated the extraordinary potential to trap magnetic fields of very high order with very compact sizes. This has significantly increased the efficiency of rotating machines and improved power/torque density, while having low synchronous reactance with large overloading capacity, high transient stability with low noise and harmonic content with the additional cost of cooling. This thesis focuses on a new type of superconducting magnet which uses superconducting tape as the field source. The most significant limiting factor for superconducting magnets is their size.;This new superconducting magnet has made possible the development of HTS magnets with flexible sizes by splitting the 2G HTS tapes to form the persistent current rings. By stacking HTS closed loop rings into a compact magnet, our HTS ring magnet has been proven to generate a trapped magnetic field higher than 5 T. The main advantage of the new magnet compared to existing trapped field HTS magnets is that the magnetic field lies parallel to the ab plane of the HTS, leading to higher critical currents in the same magnetic field. This thesis reports our key findings so far. Two different stacking configuration magnet samples were tested using the field cooling magnetization at 25 K and 4.2 K, with magnet diameter 90 mm and 150 mm, respectively. Over 4.6 T of the trapped field has been reported by using Super Power tapes with a field cooling process at 25 K, which is the highest field trapped in the ring magnets for first configuration. A new stacking design was proposed to improve magnetic field distribution within the magnet and has the potential to trap more magnetic field with the estimated trap field of 9.4 T at 4.2 K. A three dimensional model was developed to simulate the performance of the ring magnets, and good agreements between experiment and simulation have been achieved. The new HTS permanent magnet with improved field homogenisation and large diameter is promising for medical imaging applications, as well as propulsion applications.
Advisor / supervisor
  • Zhang, Min.
Resource Type
DOI
Date Created
  • 2020
Former identifier
  • 9912960792202996

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