Simulation of electrical and thermal behavior of high temperature superconducting fault current limiting transformer (HTc-SFCLT)

Superconducting Fault Current Limiting Transformer (SFCLT) is expected to perform functions both of transformer in the normal operating condition and of fault current limiter in the system fault condition. As the Phase-3 of the SFCLT project, we have been developing SFCLT based on Bi2212/CuNi bulk coils at LN2 temperature and verified its technical feasibility. In this paper, we developed a numerical model for evaluation of the electrical and thermal behavior of HTc-SFCLT such as current limitation and recovery characteristics. This model took into account E-J characteristics of Bi2212/CuNi bulk coil and its electrical and thermal transient phenomena during the operation of HTc-SFCLT. The simulated current agreed well with the experimental data with the error of less than 5%. The excellent current limitation and self recovery characteristics obtained by the experiments could also be reproduced. With the numerical model, current and thermal behavior of HTc-SFCLT was simulated for different parameters of conductor configuration, which would be useful for the future design and optimization of HTc-SFCLT.