Performance Evaluation of 2G HTS Current Leads for HTS Transformers on High Speed Rail

Second generation (2G) high temperature superconducting (HTS) current leads can be applied in power systems of high speed railway vehicles and determine the performances of the systems. In this paper, five HTS current leads consist of 12 turns of HTS tapes are presented and meet a current carrying capacity requirement of 860 A. The leads are designed with single stack, triangular, quadrilateral, hexagonal, and dodecagonal structures. Finite element method (FEM) is used to build 3D current lead models. Further, magnetic vector potential A is used to calculate electromagnetic fields for analysis. The current distribution, magnetic field distribution and losses of the current leads are obtained and the influence of the structures are investigated, which provide means for optimization designs of HTS current leads for high current applications. Experiments and modeling results of a 24 turn dodecagonal current lead are compared, which proves the effectiveness of this method.