682 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 5, NO.
2, JUNE 1995
AC Losses in High Tc Superconductors
A.M. Campbell
IRC in Superconductivity, University of Cambridge , Cambridge, UK
Abstract - The losses in high T, conductors do
not differ in principle from those in low T,
materials, and the same calculations can be used.
However it is necessary to allow for the
granularity of the materials and the high aspect
ratio of the conductors. This paper derives
simple, if approximate, expressions for
calculating the losses in the most important
cases for practical purposes. These are the use
of BSCCO tapes in magnets and cables at power
frequencies. The predictions of elliptical and
thin strip models are compared and it is found
that an elliptical geometry agrees best with the
experimental results. It is also found that the
the voltage measured in a transport measurement
depends on the position of the contacts and that
if an unambiguous loss measurement is required
it is necessary to include the flux outside the
sample in the voltage measurement loop.
I. INTRODUCTLON
One of the applications of high T, superconductors which
is nearest realisation is in power cables and transformers.
For this purpose we need to know the AC losses at 50 and
60Hz. Losses at other frequencies can be found using the
same principles so this paper will concentrate on these
frequencies and on silver coated BSCCO tapes. The AC loss
of a supexonductor is not a material parameter like the loss
tangent of a dielectric but can be calculated from the DC
critical current density. It is very dependent on the shape
of the conductor and there is a large literature on the subject
in low T, materials. In principle high T, materials can be
treated the same way, but a number of complications need
to be addressed. Firstly the rapid flux creep and flat VI
curve mean that the apparent J, will depend on frequency if
the sample size is comparable to the skin depth.
Furthermore a measurable DC resistance will add an ohmic
component to the transport current loss calculated from the
critical state model [l]. However in high quality wires
this effect is relatively small and we find that in our
BSCCO tapes the loss per cycle in transport measurements
below I, and in magnetic experiments is independent of
frequency [2]. Secondly the materials are granular so that
two critical current densities are involved, i.e. inter and intra
grain currents, both of which may vary rapidly with field.
Thirdly high T, materials tend to come in the form of flat
strips with a large demagnetising factor which makes the
calculation of the magnetic field difficult, and finally the
material properties are very anisotropic.
Manuscript received November 16th, 1994.
I would like to than M. Ciszek and B. Glowacki for many
helpful discussions.
1051-8223/95$04.00 0
Authorized licensed use limited to: Universidad Nac de Educación a Distancia (UNED). Downloaded on March 21,2023 at 09:19:45 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
However although these complications make an
accurate calculation of losses difficult it is possible to make
approximations which lead to results which are adequate for
practical design purposes.
We can split the applications into two regimes, large field
penetrations and small field penetrations. The division
between the two regimes is the extemal field which just
fills the cross section with the criticai current density,
which is the same as the field generated at the Centre of the
sample by this current distribution.
Experimentally we expect the losses to be dominated by
either eddy current losses, which are proportional to the
square of the frequency and amplitude, or by hysteresis
losses which are proportional to the frequency. In the
latter case large penetration losses are proportional to the
amplitude and low penetration losses to the cube of the
amplitude.
II. LARGE PENETRATIONS
A Superconductor Loss
For a rectangular superconductorof width 2a and thickness
2d the penetration of a field parallel to the long face (a)
occurs at poJ,d. This is about 6 millitesla in our tapes.
The penetration of a perpendicular field occurs at a field Bo:-
B,= ( ~ J / z )u(czo q z l + ~InLj++z21
~ ) (1)
where W d .
This field is typically about three times the parallel
penetration field, the width only enters logarithmically.
Fields well above this imply large penetrations and it is
easy to write down accurate formulae for the loss, at least in
homogeneous materials. (The effect of granularity is
discussed in section VII).
Fig.1. The field lines are Fig.2. If a DC critical
not distorted and move at current is flowing the
velocity proportional to x. electric centre is at the edge.
Since the field does not vary significantly across the
sample we can assume constant J, and since the applied field
is not significantly distorted we can assume that straight
flux lines move towards the electric centre (Fig.1)
This defines the electric field, it rises linearly with x from
zero at the electric centre, which is determined by
symmetry. The electric field is x dB/dt, so the local
dissipation is J,xdB/dt. Integrating this over the cross
1995 IEEE

section and a complete cycle of an AC signal with peak
amplitude B gives a loss L:-
L= 2J$a jlm3
If we pass a DC current equal to the critical value through
the sample the Bean model tells us that the electric centre
moves to the edge of the sample as in Fig.2. The flux has
to move twice as far so the loss is now 4J,Ba. In fact it
can be shown that this expression is exact for any shape of
the cross section [3] if a is taken as the maximum value of
x which is inside the sample. This brings out the fact that
the loss is rather independent of sample shape but depends
mainly on the width perpendicular to the applied field. For
AC fields and currents the loss is multiplied by a factor
(l+i2/3)where i=&.
B . Silver Loss
We can apply the same reasoning to find the loss in the
silver sheath since the electric field will be the same as in
the superconductor at the same value of x. The loss is
obtained by averaging oE2 and is (7r/3)(0wB2a2)joules per
unit volume of silver. If we have an alternating current the
loss is multiplied by a factor (1+3i2/8). The effect of the
electric field in the superconductor due to the transporr
c m n t has been ignored since it will be much smaller.
For the result to be valid we must avoid the skin effect
regime. This means that the area of silver must be small
compared with 62 where 6 is the skin depth of silver. If
this does not hold the superconductor will be shielded from
the field by eddy currents and can be ignored. If the
condition is met we can then write the ratio of the silver
loss to the superconductor loss R as :
(3)
where B* is the p a h e 1 penetration field. The skin depth
of silver at 77K is about 3 mm and for our tapes ad/ti2 is
about 0.1. This means that the silver losses will begin to
dominate the hysteresis losses at an amplitude of about
60mT which is considerably smaller than the fields in
transformers.
m.SMALL PENETRATIONSAND TRANSPORTCURRENTS
A Superconducting Losses.
The surface loss due to small applied fields is well
documented. More important are the losses due to transport
currents, which can never involve large penetrations since
when the critical state reaches the centre we have reached the
critical current. For low currents we can use the expression
for the surface loss using the local field generated by the
current in the same way as for an an applied field. This will
give an order of magnitude estimate even at the critical
current. However the most important shapes of conductor
have analytic solutions.
The round wire problem was in fact the first application
of the Bean model [4]. Solutions for an ellipse, a thin
strip, asperities, and a gap between strips were obtained by
Norris [5] in a very comprehensive paper which applied
Authorized licensed use limited to: Universidad Nac de Educación a Distancia (UNED). Downloaded on March 21,2023 at 09:19:45 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
683
conformal transformations to the critical state model for the
f i t time. The results of Norris for thin snips or films have
recently been extended by Indenbom and Brandt [6] and by
Zeldov et. al. [7] who also give many of the intermediate
results which were lacking in the Noms paper.
The elliptical wire is the easiest to deal with. The
critical state penemtes as a series of concentric ellipses and
the rather surprising result is that the loss per unit volume
is independent of the aspect ratio. This is in marked
contrast to the loss per unit volume in an oscillating field,
which tends to infinity as the thickness in the direction of
the applied field goes to zero. It means that we can use the
loss of a round wire for a wire of any aspect ratio,and that
the loss is not very dependent on the wire shape.
At the critical current the loss per cycle per unit lengt$
for an elliptical wire with a critical current I, is O.16p,Ic
and that for a thin rectangular film is 0.12&,1: so that the
difference is not very great. However at low currents the
behaviour is rather different. The ellipse follows the usual
I3 dependence in common with most hysteretic systems
which trace out a Rayleigh loop at low amplitudes.
However in the film the losses are proportional to f.
The losses reduce rapidly with i=I/I,. -Athalf I, the loss
in an ellipse is reduced by a factor of 16 and for a idm it is
40. If losses are a significant problem there are clearly
advantages to be gained by making a cable large enough to
be operated well below its critical current.
In reference [6] it is stated that the Bean model does not
apply to thin films, which has caused a certain amount of
confusion. The basis of this remark is illustrated in fig. 3
where the connection between the elliptical solution and the
film is made clear. The Bean model applies to the ellipse
of any aspect ratio and can also be applied to the film if it is
accepted that J, flows in a very narrow surface layer in the
central region. It is only when we add up the current across
the thickness to get a current density per unit width, j,, that
we find that the centre portion is not saturated, but carries a
current which is less than the critical value per unit width.
However as the Bean model only refers to a current density
per unit area it is misleading to say that it cannot be used.
Current dendly
Fig.3. The current density in a thin film is a projection of
the Bean model for an ellipse onto the x axis.
A second conclusion in reference [6] is that in a
magnetisation measurement there is an apparent surface
banier of Hc=jJ7r due to geometric effects. It is because the
initial penetration is proportional to the square of the field
 684
rather than the usual linear penetration. However calculation
shows that this is a much smaller effect than suggested.
3 10
ii Parallel Penetration
Hc / rc 4 + -
0 0.4 0.8
Differential Permeability
Fig.4.The penetration of an applied transverse field into a
film. This is infinite for zero thickness, the lines are for an
aspect ratio of 1:40.
The expression given for the magnetic moment per unit
length is:-
M=jc a2 tanh(H,lH,) (4)
and figure 4 shows the differentialpermeability derived from
this expression.
The differential permeability is essentially a measure of
the penetration of the field into the sample and it can be
seen that the steep initial slope is confined to fields very
much less than H,. Also shown in this figure are the
penetration fields for a typical tape with an aspect ratio of
1:40, a J, of 10000 A/cm2 and a half width of 2”. The
dotted line is the parallel differential permeability and it can
be seen that apart from very low amplitudes the transverse
strip behaves very like a slab in a parallel field with the real
J, reduced by a factor equal to the aspect ratio.
B . Silver Losses
An alternating current in the superconductor is associated
with an electric field at the surface which for thin cladding
will cause an electric field in the silver of the same
magnitude. Provided we are not in the skin effect regime
we can assume that the magnetic field is that due to the
superconductor alone and calculate the electric field f ” it.
The expressions given by Norris [5] for the elliptical
conductor can be used to find the flux inside any point in
the silver cladding and the electric field calculated from the
rate of change of flux. This involves some rather heavy
algebra but we can get a good estimate as follows.
We divide the loss by the current to get the in phase
voltage. We then apply this voltage to the silver cladding
and find the loss from ohm’s law. At the critical current
the loss for an elliptical wire is ( 0 p ~ I ~ ~ / ( 4 x
watts
) ~ ) per
meter so the RMS voltage is op&/(2x2) volts per meter.
The silver loss is therefore Q[o~,I,/(~R~)] watts per unit
volume of silver. The ratio of silver loss to superconductor
Authorized licensed use limited to: Universidad Nac de Educación a Distancia (UNED). Downloaded on March 21,2023 at 09:19:45 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
loss is (2/7cz)(A,/S2) where A, is the cross section area of
silver so that by avoiding the skin depth regime we
automatically ensure that the silver loss is less than the
superconductor loss. (This underestimates the loss since
the silver loss depends on the RMS voltage, rather than the
in-phase component. For planar geometry, which can be
solved analytically, the error is a factor of 4).
IV COhlBINEDFIELDS AND CURRENTS.
Analytic solutions have been found for the case of an
applied current and transverse field in thin films [6,7].
There are a number of different cases, the one illustrated in
fig. 5 is where the applied field is less than the self field so
that the effect is an asymmetry of the critical state on the
two sides. Losses in this situation were not quoted but
since one side gets smaller while the other gets bigger we
would expect the effect of the external field to be second
order in B/B*. This situation needs more work, but for large
Bo we can use the results of section II.
t
I
tB.
I
FigS. A field applied normal Fig.6. A parallel field
to a f i i increase the penetration does not affect edge
on one side and decreases it on penetration.
the other.
Of more practical importance, since it is directly relevant
to cables, is the effect of a field parallel to the film surface.
Experimental results have shown that the longitudinal loss
voltage in these circumstances is the same whether the
applied field is DC or AC with the same peak amplitude 181.
This means that the main effect of the field is the
reduction in J, due to the increased total field, which is a
reasonable result. A parallel field produces a low loss on its
own and, if it is less than the parallel penetration field, adds
little to the penetration at the edges, where the main log
due to the transport current is taking place (fig.6).
Therefore if J, were to remain constant the application of
a parallel field should have little effect on the losses and
there is little difference between an AC and DC field in this
geometry.
V. CABLES.
The main application of these results is to the calculation
of AC losses in cables. These consist of tapes mounted on
the outside of a cylindrical former as in fig.7. Since the
critical current is reached when B reaches the penetration
field these cables are never in the high penetration regime
(unless there are seveml layers). The ideal geometry would
be a single uniform layer of superconductor. If the
superconducting layer is 2d thick and the core radius r the
loss can be written (2/3n)(j1,,1,%~(d/r)). This is a lower limit
to the loss. However mechanical constraints will require a

significant separation of the tapes According to Norris
the edge losses at a gap in a sheet go as the square of the
gap size, and by the time the gap width is equal to the strip
width they will be effectively behaving as independent
strips. However for currents close to I, the large
penetration means that even for closely packed strips the
loss is close to that of the isolated strip so that the
concentric uniform layer model is no longer useful. The
only effect of the radius on this expression is that a larger
radius will reduce the surface field and so increase I,. If
several layers of tapes are used it will be important to
decouple them with an insulating layer between each
conducting layer to minimise eddy c m n t losses.
B shows the flux round a strip carrying a current There is far
n more flux cutting the edge contacts than the centre contacts
Fig.7. A schematic representation of the arrangement of
eight strips round a former to form a cable.
VI LOSS MEASUREMENTS.
It is common to measure transport current losses by
means of voltage taps on the conductor but it has recently
been pointed out that this voltage is very dependent on the
position of the contacts [2,91, and cannot therefore be a true
measurement of the loss. The meaning of a voltage
measurement is illustrated by reference to figure 8.
Fig.8. Voltage contacts go from the edge of a strip to an
electrostatic voltmeter.
Although the results are obviously independent of the
nature of the voltmeter the argument is clearest if we
imagine an electrostatic voltmeter where the indicated
voltage is the electric field between the plates k. We now
apply Faraday’s law of induction to a loop consisting of
unit length along the centre of the wire, (where the field is
E,,, then along the radial sections to the voltage leads and
finally along the leads themselves. E is zero along these
sections.
Then: E,,-E,=d(q$+&)ldt or Ev=d($l+qbZ)ldt+Ec (5)
Authorized licensed use limited to: Universidad Nac de Educación a Distancia (UNED). Downloaded on March 21,2023 at 09:19:45 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
685
Hence what we measure on the voltmeter is the electric
field along the centre line plus the flux change enclosed
between this line and the leads to the meter, including the
section within the superconductor. If we take our line
integral along the surface instead of the centre line we see
that an equivalent statement is that we measure the surface
field plus the flux change between the surface and the meter,
$1.
If we are below I, there is no central field so that the
voltage is entirely attributable to the changing flux. If we
have a DC current in a copper wire there is no change of
flux and the voltage is the conventional resistive one. In
general both components will contribute.
The reason for the voltage differencesis now clear. Fig.9
and the voltage will be greater by a factor of about the
aspect ratio of the conductor.
Fig.9. The field lines round Fig.10. Only if the leads
a strip carrying a current . enclose a large loop is the
voltage proportional to the
loss.
To obtain a model independent measurement of the loss
the loop containing the voltmeter should extend to a point
well away from the conductor so that the lines of force are
circular (fig.10). The voltage will be the same for any
point on the circumference so a single measurement will
suffice, but there is the considerable disadvantage of a large
inductive signal which will be difficult to balance out
accurately.
VlC
Fig.11. This shows the calculated error in the loss if we
use voltage contacts at the edge of a film, and an ellipse of
40:l aspect ratio.
The indicated voltage can be calculated for any distance of
the meter in both the elliptical and film approximation
using the expressions for the flux in references [5.6,71 .
Fig.11 shows the ratio of real loss to apparent loss as
measured by voltage contacts on the edge of the sample for
 686

the two cases. It can be seen that near I, the error is less rather less good, which needs to be explained.
than a factor of two, but for low currents there is a The figure shows that we can predict the behaviour of
substantial discrepancy. single BSCCO tapes carrying transport currents at power
An interesting result is that although at low currents the frequencies from a knowledge of the DC critical current with
film loss goes as 14,the apparent loss as measured by edge suscient accuracy for practical purposes.
voltage contacts goes as I3 in the usual way. Therefore the
predicted I4dependence of the loss will not be picked up by VI."ARY MATERTAL
a conventional resistive measurement.
Multifilamentary high T, materials are now becoming
(I)
4)
OB available, and are proving to have unexpected benefits in
s
U
terms of resistance to mechanical deformation. However
without twisting the wire there is no reduction in AC
r 0.6

H
2 0.4
losses and there may be an increase. Fig 14 shows the
field lines for an applied field and transport current for a
monolithic and multifilamentary material. The flux lines
I
0 must cross the superconductor and the normal material, and
09 for the case of the multifilamentary material we can just
5K average the properties over the cross section.
1 ' . " * " " I For the case of the applied field the loss per unit volume
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 OB 1.0 is 2d,B as before, where J, is the average over the cross
Ilk section. This means that if the area of superconductor is
Fig.12. A comparison of the error in the loss between kept constant the total loss of a conductor increases in
voltage contacts on the edge of the superconductor, and proportion to the width occupied by filaments perpendicular
contacts separated from the superconductor by 0.5" of Ag. to the field. It is independent of filament diameter.
For the case of transport currents the same arguments
To obtain an unambiguous loss measurement we need to apply to the average J, of a filamentary material as to a
sample the flux over a distance much larger than the strip monolithic wire so that for a given critical current the loss
width. However for practical purposes quite a small loop is independent of the size or distribution of filaments.
will be adequate. Figure 12 shows the ratio for a loop of
OS", which is about the thickness of silver between the
contacts and the superconductor in a real wire, and it can be
seen the discrepancy is much reduced.
A comparison of these conclusions with the experimental
results of Ciszek et al. [8] is shown in fig. 13.

10 7
I
0 Experiment
0 Experiment I

Fig.14. External and self field Fig.15. Flux can diffuse

flux lines in multifilamentary from the ends or cut
and monolithic wires. through the sides.

This conclusion is based on the assumption that the flux

> 0
1 I
0.1
Fig.13. A comparison of the measured edge voltage of a
monofilament BSCCO tape with two models.
The lines show the voltage calculated for the edge of an
elliptical conductor and for the thin film model. The
experimental results are for a 4mm wide tape with an aspect
ratio of 1:40. It can be seen that the elliptical model gives
a good fit. If we allow for the half millimeter thickness of
silver between the contacts and the superconductor the fit is
moves across the filaments. Flux can reach the centre of
1 the conductor by two routes. It can cut the
1 superconducting filaments and move in from the edge, or it
can diffuse between the filaments from the ends of the wire
(fig.15).
In the latter case the filaments behave independently and
the loss is proportional to the filament diameter rather than
the conductor diameter. This clearly leads to a large
reduction in losses. However the diffusion time constant
for a kilometer of wire is about twenty years, so measures
must be taken to provide a shorter diffusion path. This is
done by twisting the wire so that flux rings can be nucleated
at the filament crossovers and expand to the mid points
between crossovers. The effective diffusion length is now
the twist pitch. For twisting to be effective the pitch

Authorized licensed use limited to: Universidad Nac de Educación a Distancia (UNED). Downloaded on March 21,2023 at 09:19:45 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.

must be less than the skin depth, which is about 3mm in
pure silver at 77K and 50Hz and a little longer for silver
alloys. Making such a conductor will be technically
difficult; and in any case is only useful for extemal fields, it
has no effect on self field losses, which require transposed
filaments if they are to be decoupled. These conclusions
are in broad agreement with the results of Gammon et. al.
[lo] apart from the large eddy current loss in the cable.
This is may be due to interlayer coupling.
VII. GRNWUNIY
A. Large penetrations
High T, materials consist of grains with a high J,, the
intragrain J,(intra) separated by weak links with a much
weaker the intergrain J,(inter). The detailed response of
such a system to an altemating filed is complex and detailed
calculations will be found in references [ll] and [12]. We
need to introduce a third amplitude regime in which the
grains as well as the weak links between them are penetrated
by the external field. The same expressions apply to the
grains as to the complete wire, although interactions
between closely packed grains will make the results less
accurate.
We must add a loss of approximately 2BsJc(intra)where s
is the grain size. This result is not affected by a transport
current, but since the only way of measuring J,(intra) is
from the magnetic hysteresis, we might as well use the the
measured hysteresis of the magnetisation curve to predict
the loss in AC conditions.
B . Low penetrations
At very low penetrations the grains can be treated as
perfectly diamagnetic (fig.16). We can treat the system as a
composite and average fields over many grains. B is the
average flux density which, if the transport J, were zero,
would be less than an applied parallel field by something
like the volume fraction of normal material. We can
defiie a local H as the extemal field in equilibrium with the
local value of B, just as we do in conventional
superconductors, and a relative permeability, A,as B / M .
is equal to the volume fraction of normal material if the
grains are long cylinders parallel to the field but in general
the exact relationship will depend on the morphology and
needs to be measured experimentally (0.3 is typical).
Fig. 16 A composite of
Fig.17. The penetration of
diamagnetic grains and the H and B fields.
weak links.
Authorized licensed use limited to: Universidad Nac de Educación a Distancia (UNED). Downloaded on March 21,2023 at 09:19:45 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
687
The fields which result in a cylinder parallel to an applied
field are shown in fig.17 and the transport current is
dH/dx. Since for a given J, the value of B is lower by a
factor A compared with a homogeneous material the effect
of the diamagnetic grains is to reduce the losses by this
factor.
If the field is perpendicular to a smp the situation is rather
different (fig.18). Demagnetising effects force B to be the
same inside the sample as outside. For a given current the
amount of flux crossing the current, and so the losses, are
unaffected by the presence of the diamagneticgrains.
Clearly the assumption of perfect diamagnetism will not
always be valid and there will be a surface loss on each
grain. The importance of this will depend in detail on the
shape of the grains, their size, and the relative magnitudes
of J,(inter) and J,(intra). This is something on which we
need more information, but the good agreement of fig.13
suggests that at least for transport currents the grain surface
losses can be ignored.
Fig.18. If the field is perpendicular to the strip the
average flux density is equal to the extemal flux density.
REFERENCES
[l] S. P. Ashworth, Physica C, vol. 229, pp355-360. 1994
[2] M. Ciszek, A.M.Campbel1, and B.Glowcki,
Physica C., in press.
[3] A M Campbell, Cryogenics v01.22, pp3-16, 1978,
[4] R A Kamper, Phys. Lett. vol. 2, pp290-296, 1962.
[5] W.T.N~rris, JShys D., ~01.3, pp489-507, 1970
[6] Brandt, E.H., and Indenbom,M., Phys.Rev. B. ,vo1..48,
pp12893-, 1993.
[7] E. Zeldov, J. R. Clem, M. McElfresh and M. Darwin,
Phys. Rev. B , vo1.49, pp9802-9822, 1994.
[8] M. Ciszek, A.M.Campbel1 and B.Glowacki, these
Proc=dws.
[9] T. Fukunaga, S.Maruyama, and A. Oota, Adv, in
Superconductuvuty VI, Springer-Verlag,Tokyo,
pp633-637, 1994..
[lo] J. J. Gammon, A.P. Malozemoff, M.J.Minot,
F.Barenghi, P. Metra, G.Vellego, J. Orehotsky, and M.
Suenaga, Advances in Cryogenic Engineering, vol40,
p45-52.
[ll) Gomt)ry,F., Takacs,S, and Lobotka,P., in 'Studies of
High TemperatureSuperconductors',
ed. A.V.Narlikar, (Nova Science Publishers),
New York, 1991..
112) K-H.Muller. in 'Magnetic Susceptibility of
Superconductors and other Spin Systems'., ed
R.A.Heim et. al ., Plenum Press, p229-25O.New York