Refinements in billet design for SSC strand

Refinements in the design of superconducting strand to be used in the manufacture of magnets for the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) are described that have considerably improved performance characteristics in key areas; first, by maintaining geometric uniformity and second, by contributing to piece length yield. With 2.5- mu m-diameter filaments and a copper-to-superconductor ratio of 1.8:1, the total number of filaments required is approximately 23000. Stacking hexagon units and reducing the amount of void space has enabled the production of largely uniform arrays and consequently uniform spacing. A strand with approximately 23000 fine filaments has been produced with a mostly uniform filament array.<
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