Bridge-type mechanical lap joint of a 100 kA-class HTS conductor having stacks of GdBCO tapes

In this paper, we reported design, fabrication and test of a prototype 100-kA-class high-temperature superconducting (HTS) conductor, especially for joint section, to be used for segmented HTS helical coils in the FFHR-d1 heliotron-type fusion reactor. The conductor has a geometry of three rows and fourteen layers of Gadolinium Barium Copper Oxide HTS (GdBCO) tapes embedded in copper and stainless steel jackets and has a joint section with bridge-type mechanical lap joint. We introduced improved method to fabricate the joint based on pilot experiments and we were able to apply a current of ∼ 120 kA at 4.2 K, 0.45 T to the sample without quench at joint. The obtained joint resistance was ∼ 2 nΩ, which was lower than our previous data. Though joint resistance increased with a rise in current and magnetic field, predicted joint resistance in the environment of actual helical coil in the FFHR-d1 was small enough to properly run the cryoplant of the reactor. (author)