Performance Evaluation on Bridge Type Joint of CORC Cables

The length of a single high temperature superconducting (HTS) compact cable is limited by the fabrication process of both cables and the raw materials, while the longer compact cables have better prospects for industrial applications, especially for facilities in large capacity. In order to enhance the length of compact cable, it is quite crucial to develop a mature fabrication process of cable joints. In this paper, a bridge type joint with three structures for conductor on round core (CORC) cable is presented. Both numerical and experimental methods are presented to study the working mechanism of this type of cable joint. A 3-D numerical model based on the real geometry is built to qualitative analyze the influence of different joint parameters, in which a relatively high conductivity is used instead of the E-J characteristics. At the same time, cable joints with different bridge length are fabricated and the joint resistance is used to evaluate the performance of the bridge type joint. The conclusions will be useful for the future design of joints, and the fabrication technology is still upgrading to improve the joint performance.