The Electrical Behavior of Stacked Coated Conductors Concerning the Interlayer Resistance

How low should the layer-to-layer contact resistance be for super-conducting tapes to form a good stack? With the purpose of answering this question, a 3-D finite element model was established based on the idea that a superconducting stack with an anisotropic resistivity could macroscopically behave just like a stack of coated conductor tapes with interlayer resistance. The model was first carefully compared with common sense under several conditions and then used for obtaining the quantitative relation between the current redistribution distance and the interlayer resistivity. As a short conclusion, average perpendicular resistivity as low as 4 × 10
⁻⁷
Ω·m is necessary, if one wants the current redistribution to be done in 5 cm characteristic length.