Author: Mar Tristany

“High temperature superconductors: how do we go from a single HTS tape to its deployment in high-field magnets and large scale applications?” By Dr. Luisa CHIESA Mechanical Engineering Department, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA Date:   8th NOVEMBER Time:   12:00 h Place:  ICMAB Meeting room Short abstract: After 25 years of development, several high temperature superconductors (HTS) are becoming engineering materials commercially available in long-length wires. Those conductors are capable of carrying enormous electrical current in strong magnetic fields while meeting various other challenges. Such characteristics enable the construction of a broad spectrum of devices useful for basic science, medicine, and energy. In this talk, the state-of-art manufacturing, properties and challenges of key HTS conductors will be discussed with particular focus on REBCO coated conductors. The electrical, magnetic, and mechanical properties and failure mechanisms important for constructing devices will be discussed and examples of large scale projects employing those materials will be given to illustrate the positive impact those new materials could have in future generation’s magnets. Further details will be given to HTS tape cabling methods for these magnet applications. To improve fabrication methods and maximize operational performance of these cables, it is necessary to characterize both the electromechanical behavior of the full scale cables and of the individual tapes under anticipated thermal, mechanical and electromagnetic loads. Some laboratory experimentation and structural finite element analysis (FEA) that have been used to investigate the electromechanical behavior of single HTS tapes and Twisted Stacked-Tape Cable (TSTC) conductors will be discussed. The numerical and experimental results discussed in this talk, provide important details about the strain dependence of the critical current for various load types expected during high field magnet operations. Short bio— Luisa Chiesa is an associate professor at Tufts University. Before joining the faculty at Tufts in 2009, Dr. Chiesa received her Ph.D. in Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT and her bachelor in Physics from the Universita’ Statale in Milan (Italy). Dr. Chiesa worked in the field of superconducting magnets for the past 15 years. After a year as a visiting student at Fermilab working on quench protection for the LHC quadrupoles, she joined the Superconducting Magnets group at LBNL where she was heavily involved in the experimental characterization of high field superconducting magnets. Currently, her primary research area is the electro-mechanical characterization of low temperature and high temperature superconductors for large magnets used in high-energy physics and fusion power devices. In particular her laboratory specializes in experimental and numerical techniques to characterize the critical current of superconducting strands, tapes and cables under different mechanical loading conditions. Dr. Chiesa is an active member of the IEEE Council on Superconductivity and serves as technical editor on the IEEE Transaction on Applied Superconductivity journal and as board member of major conferences in the field of superconductivity. If you would like to arrange a meeting with her please contact: Prof. Teresa PUIG (teresa.puig@icmab.es) or Dr. Mar TRISTANY (mtristany@icmab.es)