Design and preliminary tests of a twin coil HTS SMES for pulse power operation

The design of a twin coil 2 × 200 kJ–1 MW pulse power high temperature superconductor (HTS) superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES) demonstrator is presented. Its aim is to test at small scale various possibilities of electromagnetic launcher powering. The foreseen operation modes include high voltage discharge in power capacitors, sequential discharges of identical energies from two coupled coils, and XRAM current multiplication. Special attention was paid to the arrangement of the coils for the energies discharged to be equal. The coils are cooled by conduction from three cryocoolers; the thermal design was optimized in order to maintain the coils around 15 K in spite of the high number of current leads required for XRAM operation (eight). Preliminary tests of the demonstrator are also presented, showing that the thermal and electrical characteristics are in very good agreement with the design objectives. (Some figures in this article are in colour only in the electronic version)