CURRENT REDISTRIBUTION DURING QUENCH IN A SMES COIL WITH SEPARATED CONDUCTOR AND DUMP SHUNT

Some designs for large Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage (SMES) coils have two or more parallel current carrying paths. During normal operation only the path with superconductor (conductor) carries curren t. During a quench, however, current transfers out of the conductor in to an alternate current path (dump shunt). Timely current transfer mus t be assured to prevent damage to the coil. Current transfer is delaye d due to local coil inductances if the conductor and shunt are separat ed. This paper describes a computer program LDELAY that calculates the transient current distribution. Results obtained for transient curren t redistribution in SMES/ETM and GEM magnets during a coil quench am p resented.