Current limiting characteristics of flux-lock type high-TC superconducting fault current limiter with control circuit for magnetic field

A flux-lock type superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL) can change the amplitude of the magnetic field by adjusting either the inserting resistance or the phase adjusting capacitor. However, the magnetic field coil cannot generate enough magnetic field for some time after a fault happens due to resonance between the phase adjusting capacitor and the magnetic field coil. It is also required for the magnetic field generated to be controlled for the application to High-T-C superconducting (HTSC) elements which have different critical characteristics. This paper proposes a flux-lock type SFCL with a control circuit for the magnetic field, which is composed of solid state switches connected with the magnetic field coil. A current limiting experiment of this model was carried out. We showed that the amplitude of the fault current as well as the magnetic field could be controlled by the sinusoidal pulse width modulation (SPWM) operation, one of the switching techniques for controlling the magnetic field.