Structural Features of Twisted Stacked-Tape Cables With High Lorentz Loads Using Finite Element Analysis

Structural support features for a Twisted Stacked-Tape Cable (TSTC) were evaluated through finite element analysis (FEA) to evaluate the mechanical performance of a TSTC surrounded with a rigid copper core and exposed to transverse compres-sion. Annealing of the copper core can occur during the manu-facturing process, so the stress accumulation of the stack was studied as a function of yield strength of the copper, and the re-sults suggested that a lower yield strength copper will results in higher stress accumulation in the tape stack. To ensure ade-quate support for the cable, two possible solutions were pre-sented: increasing the core diameter or adding a stainless-steel jacket outside the core containing the stack of tapes. Both op-tions resulted in similar reduction in the maximum stress of the tapes. The mechanical stability of a conductor can also be affected by the thickness of the tapes used in the cable. For the same cable dimensions, higher currents densities can be ob-tained using thinner tapes, which however could jeopardize the mechanical integrity of the support. Different tapes architec-tures, varying substrate and copper stabilizer thicknesses were also studied. Results suggested that for the same amount of current carried by each tape, thinner tapes will experience high-er stress. Finally, a full-scale twisted model was developed. A more complex and time-consuming twisted model provides re-sults that are very similar to the simpler untwisted configura-tion used in this work, justifying its utilization