Simple measurement of the AC transport current loss for HTS conductors using an active power detection method

Reducing AC loss in a superconducting apparatus is one of the most important issues, and the precise measurement and estimation of AC losses are essential to reduce them. The four-terminal method is universally used as an electric measurement method of AC losses for superconducting tapes and wires. In this method, noise and inductive voltage superposed on the terminal voltage of the superconductor are eliminated by a lock-in amplifier and cancel coil, respectively, and then measurement of very small resistive voltage is achieved. However, using this conventional method, a plurality of measuring instruments and apparatuses are needed, and therefore the measuring system becomes complicated and much time is consumed in the calibration process. In this paper, we present a simple and precise measurement system based on an active power detection method, which is proposed as a quench detection method. The proposed system consists of a small number of instruments and apparatus and is less susceptible to noise. Its usefulness is verified by comparing the proposed method and the conventional four-terminal method in measuring the AC transport current loss of a Bi2223/Ag tape.