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 Superconductor Science and Technology

Supercond. Sci. Technol. 37 (2024) 065006 (12pp) https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6668/ad44e8

A newly developed 10 kA-level

HTS conductor: innovative
tenon-mortise-based modularized
conductor (TMMC) based on China
ancient architecture
Jinxing Zheng1,∗, Yuan Cheng1,2, Lei Wang1, Fei Liu1, Haiyang Liu1, Ming Li1
and Lei Zhu1
1
Institute of Plasma Physics, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei
230031, People’s Republic of China
2
University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, People’s Republic of China

E-mail: jxzheng@ipp.ac.cn

Received 5 November 2023, revised 14 April 2024

Accepted for publication 29 April 2024
Published 8 May 2024

Abstract
We proposed a new type of high-temperature superconducting (HTS) conductor concept:
modularized conductors (MCs) connected by Chinese traditional tenon-mortise (TM)
connection structure, referred as TMMC (tenon-mortise modularized conductor). The conductor
consisted of multiple concentric round sub-conductors with slots for stacking
rare-earth-barium-copper-oxide (REBCO) tapes. Innovatively, the REBCO stacks in the
adjacent sub-conductors were arranged with the fully-misaligned configuration to enhance the
critical current’s isotropy with respect to magnetic field and reduce ac loss. For example, the
angle between the adjacent stacks in the two adjacent sub-conductors was 45◦ if each
sub-conductor contains 4 REBCO stacks. In order to construct the fully-misaligned
configuration, the sub-conductors were designed with two open half-circular formers and
connected by TM structure which makes the conductor modularized and simply to assembly
and disassembly. Based on the design concept, a prototype conductor containing 160 REBCO
tapes distributed in the four concentric sub-conductors was fabricated. The conductor’s
measured critical current was 13.69 kA at 77 K and self-field, which was consistent to the
simulation result. In order to further improve the TMMC’s engineering critical current density
(J ce ) and bending performance, we proposed two enhancement approaches: reducing the
former’s thickness and re-arrange stacks in the outer sub-conductors. With the enhancements,
both TMMC’s radius and J ce were comparable to the existing slotted-core conductor. The study
shows the TMMC’s advantages of non-twisted structures, easy assembly, high-current carrying
and low ac losses, which made it promising for constructing large-scale scientific devices.
Keywords: tenon-mortise structure, modularized HTS conductor, TMMC, REBCO tapes, ac loss

∗
Author to whom any correspondence should be addressed.

1 © 2024 IOP Publishing Ltd

Supercond. Sci. Technol. 37 (2024) 065006
1. Introduction
The second-generation high-temperature-superconductor
(HTS) materials, namely the rare-earth-barium-copper-oxide
(REBCO) tapes, are promising in manufacturing both small-
aperture high-static-field (>30 T) solenoid coils [1, 2] and
giant magnets under transient electromagnetic environment
for large-scale scientific devices, such as fusion reactors [3]
due to the outstanding current-carrying capacity and good
mechanical stability [4, 5]. The small-aperture high-static-
field coils are solenoids which are wound with one single tape
or few stacked tapes (pancake or layer wound). These mag-
net are small in size and thus have small operating current.
To achieve transient high field in a meter-class large-scale
device, the conductors require kA-class current. Therefore,
the first task and challenge of employing REBCO tapes in
large-scale scientific devices is to manufacture a high-current
cable/conductor.
Several conductor/cable designs have been proposed using
REBCO tapes, and most of them present the twisted or
transposed concepts, constituting cable-in-conduit conduct-
ors (CICCs) inspired by the low-temperature-superconducting
(LTS) cables and conductors [6], such as Roebel assembled
coated conductor cable [7], a Roebel-structure transposed
cable (X cable) [8], VIPER conductor [9], quasi-round TSTC
(QisTAc) [10], slotted-core CICCs [11], conductor on round
core [12], conductor-in-tube cables [13], round soldered-
twisted stacked [14], CrossConductor [15], and twisted Quasi-
Isotropic strand [16]. The main reason for manufacturing LTS
conductors with twisting is to avoid instabilities of LTS mater-
ials. Instead, the stability of HTS is much higher than LTS,
HTS conductors can be made of non-twisted tapes, such as
non-twisted stacked tapes assembled in rigid structure [17]
and Quasi-Isotropic strand [18]. Nevertheless, twisting, as an
approach to reducing inductance mismatch, improving even
current distribution in tapes and reducing AC loss, is employed
to enhance the performance of HTS conductors [19]. However,
recent studies showed that non-twisted HTS cables’ induct-
ance variation is typically less than 2%, which results in
slight effect of uneven current distribution, and the reduction
by twisting is less than 36% in terms of ac loss for HTS
cables [6]. Therefore, the benefits of performance enhance-
ment brought by the twisting is limited with comparison to
the much easier fabrication process of non-twisted conduct-
ors. Among non-twisted concept, the Commonwealth Fusion
TF model coil is the only concept that has been tested on
a large, high field (20 T) magnet, the largest HTS magnet
built so far. In this magnet, there is no conductor, the tape are
inserted in grooves in radial plates, then solder impregnated
[20, 21].
Meanwhile, considering of the highly anisotropic prop-
erties and remarkable ac loss effects of REBCO tapes [22,
23], optimized structures are also employed in the non-
twisted HTS conductors. For example, tapes are arranged
vertically and horizontally in the Quasi-Isotropic strand to
reduce the anisotropic values of critical current with respect
to magnetic field [18]. It is meaningful to explore more
2
J Zheng et al
arrangement configurations of REBCO stacks to enhance the
performance of non-twisted conductors. But this would be
restricted by soldering structure, in which slots for stack-
ing REBCO tapes are limited to unidirectional directions.
Besides, the conductors are difficult to disassembly and
repair when the REBCO stacks are soldered with the con-
ductor’s former as a while one. Modularized conductors (MCs)
without soldering will be a promising concept to solve the
issues, and this type of conductor has not been developed
before.
In this paper, we propose a new type of HTS conductor
concept: MCs which are assembled without soldering but
Chinese traditional tenon-mortise (TM) connection structure,
therefore the new conductor is referred as TMMC (tenon-
mortise modularized conductor). The article is structured as
follows. Section 2 introduces the idea and concept design
of the MC based on TM connection. The detailed optimiza-
tion process of designing the stacks’ configuration is presen-
ted in section 3. A prototype conductor with 4 concent-
ric sub-conductors is fabricated and its critical current at
77 K and self-field is measured and simulated in section 4.
Section 5 gives the discussions about enhancing the TMMC’s
engineering critical current density and reducing ac losses
further.
2. MC based on TM structure
Figure 1 illustrates the structure and assembly process of the
proposed TMMC composing of multiple concentric round
sub-conductors with varying diameters. The innermost cent-
ral channel (diameter 6 mm) is used for coolant flow. Each
sub-conductor consists of slotted metal formers with REBCO
stacks in the slots. The surfaces of the REBCO tapes are dis-
tributed along the circumferences of the formers to reduce the
influence of perpendicular magnetic fields on critical current
and ac loss. Innovatively, the two adjacent sub-conductors are
assembled with the fully-disaligned configuration, which is
determined by the angle between the centers of two REBCO
stacks in the adjacent sub-conductors. For instance, if each
sub-conductor holds 4 REBCO stacks, the max misalignment
angle is 45◦ , as demonstrated in figure 2. This fully-misaligned
configuration is quite different from the previous conductor
layout with slotted former/core, in which the slot number
is fewer and tapes in each slot are stacked in unidirection
direction [11]. The new configuration significantly improves
critical current isotropy with respect to magnetic field and
reduces ac losses, which has been verified based on simula-
tions in section 3.
A challenge is to maintain the misaligned configurations
of REBCO stacks in the different sub-conductors. In order to
facilitate manufacturing long conductors, we design the sub-
conductors consisting two open half-circles, which are con-
nected as a complete round sub-conductor by the TM structure
inspired by the traditional Chinese connection method used in
architecture, furniture, and instruments. The connection struc-
ture basically includes two components: convex (tenon) and
Supercond. Sci. Technol. 37 (2024) 065006
Figure 1. The structure of the modularized conductor connected by tenon-mortise structure.
Figure 2. Variations of conductors’ critical currents with respect to
external magnetic field at 20 T and 4.2 K.
concave (mortise) parts, which have many variants in prac-
tical. In our design, the swallow-tailed tenons and mortises are
used to joint the two open half-circles, as shown in figure 1.
The TM joints in the outer sub-conductor align with the slots
of REBCO stacks in the adjacent inner sub-conductor and
the misalignment configuration generates. Additional shallow
grooves perpendicular to the tape stacking slots are cutted,
therefore, the swallow-tailed tenons can stabilize the REBCO
stacks and prevent sub-conductor’s movement in axial and cir-
cumferential directions when they are inserted into the mor-
tises and grooves.
Since the assembly of sub-conductors is independent from
each other, the conductor is easily fabricated to multiple
layers to carry high currents, which makes the first suc-
cessful development of a modularized REBCO conductor.
3
J Zheng et al
However, the bending performance and engineering cur-
rent density of the conductor will be decreased because
of the multiple-layer structures which results in larger dia-
meters. To solve the issues, one can minimize the thick-
nesses of the formers, and besides re-arrange the REBCO
stacks in the outer sub-conductors, which are discussed in
section 5.
3. The optimization process for TMMC
In this part, we investigate the impact of the layer num-
bers on the conductor’s electromagnetic properties. The
conductor contains 160 REBCO tapes distributed in the
former with 4 slots around a circular cooling chan-
nel. In the conventional stacked conductor, each stack
comprises 40 REBCO tapes, marked by 1 layer in
figure 2.
Following the misaligned configuration, we construct con-
ductors with 2, 3, and 4 layers, with adjacent layers aligned
at 45◦ . Initially, we examine the critical currents of these
four conductors under an external magnetic field of 20 T at
4.2 K using the load-line method. As the critical current of
REBCO tapes strongly depends on the angle between the tapes
and the magnetic field, we vary this angle from 0 to 45◦ to
assess the effect of layer numbers on the anisotropy of crit-
ical currents with respect to the magnetic field. As presen-
ted in figure 2, the critical current isotropy in even layers is
superior to that in odd layers. In odd layers, isotropy improves
with an increasing number of layers, while isotropy in 2 and
4 layers remains similar. The anisotropy for 1 layer con-
ductor is about 2.4 and for the 2 and 4 layers conductors is
about 1.6.
Supercond. Sci. Technol. 37 (2024) 065006 J Zheng et al

Figure 3. The prototype TMMC: the tendon–tenon connection and the assembly of TMMC conductor.

4. Fabrication and performance test of the Table 1. Geometric parameters of the prototype TMMC.
prototype TMMC Parameters Value

4.1. Parameters of the prototype TMMC Sub-conductor number 4

We have manufactured a prototype TMMC according to
the above design concept, which consists of 4 concentric
sub-conductors (referred as layer 1–4 from inside out) accom-
modating a total of 160 REBCO tapes. Each sub-conductor
has 4 slots with 10 tapes in each, as shown in figure 3.
Geometric parameters of the prototype TMMC are given in
table 1. The proposed ‘non-soldering’ approach in this art-
icle is specifically applicable to TMMC conductors. In con-
trast to TSTC conductors, there is no requirement to fully
immerse the conductor in solder for the welding process.
However, in the magnet system of fusion reactors, the length
of conductors can extend to kilometers. Currently, ReBCO
tapes, produced in large quantities, have lengths on the order
of hundreds of meters. Consequently, it becomes neces-
sary to incorporate solder joints between several conduct-
ors to achieve the required length. The meticulous design of
these high-temperature superconductor (HTS) joints is a sub-
sequent aspect that demands careful consideration in the next
step.
Slot number in each sub-conductor 4
Tape number in each slot 10
The depth of each slot 2 mm
Cable length 800 mm
Outer and inner diameters of layer 1 10 mm/4 mm
Outer and inner diameters of layer 2 17 mm/11 mm
Outer and inner diameters of layer 3 24 mm/18 mm
Outer and inner diameters of layer 4 31 mm/25 mm
The REBCO tapes are produced by Shanghai
Superconductor with 4 mm width and 144 A self-field critical
current at 77 K. The tape’s anisotropic dependence of crit-
ical current on magnetic field is measured and calculated in
simulations by interpolation function of the data. The numer-
ical models for calculating conductor’s critical current are
implemented based on H formulation, in which the super-
conducting region is considered as a whole to carry current
so that the non-uniform current repartition among tapes can
be presented. Besides, the max criterion is selected as the

4
Supercond. Sci. Technol. 37 (2024) 065006
Figure 4. I c measurement for one-layer TMMC.
criteria determining conductor’s critical current, which means
that when the voltage drop per unit length reaches the critical
value Ec (1 µV cm−1 ) in at least one tape, the imposed cur-
rent is considered as the conductor’s I c [24]. According to the
simulations, the estimated critical currents of the prototype
1-layer and 4-layer TMMCs are 4.072 kA and 15.328 kA,
respectively, at 77 K and self-field.
4.2. Ic measurement for the prototype TMMC
REBCO tapes are longer than the formers of the sub-
conductors in the cable fabrication [25, 26], so that the tapes
and the ends of the prototype TMMC can be soldered with two
copper joints, shown in figure 3. It is imperative to observe that
the temperature during joint welding must not surpass 200 ◦ C
[27]. Currents are injected into REBCO tapes through the
joints. In the experiment, the prototype TMMC is immersed
in a liquid nitrogen (LN2 ) tank, and the copper joints connect
with the direct current (DC) source. The temperature of the
conductor is considered to be 77 K when liquid nitrogen ceases
to boil [28, 29].
Firstly, we measure the critical current of the prototype
TMMC with only 1-layer sub-conductor containing 40 tapes,
whose data is depicted in the figure 4. The measured value is
4012 A at 77 K and self-field, which does not differ signific-
antly from the predicted one.
Then, we implement the I c measurement of the com-
plete prototype TMMC with 4 concentric sub-conductors.
The experimental equipments and parameters are given in
figures 5(a), (b) and table 2. In the experiment of ReBCO
cable, it is customary to employ multiple voltage probes for
the purpose of discerning the state of the cable [30, 31].
In the illustrated figures 6(a), (b), V1 and V5 represent the
voltages across the two HTS joints, while V2–4 denote the
voltages across HTS part of the TMMC. During the process
of conductor energization, the values of V1 and V5 gradually
increase due to the presence of joint resistances. When the
5
J Zheng et al
current reaches 14 kA, the voltages V2 and V4 manifest the
superconducting-to-normal transition within the conductor.
Given the superconducting segment’s length of 70 cm, the crit-
ical voltage for the transition is established at 70 µV. Following
calibration, the conductor’s critical current is determined to be
13.69 kA.
Due to the inductance of the conductor, collected voltage
values may exhibit occurrences below zero. Therefore, these
figures cannot plot in log–log scale. In order to pinpoint
the specific locations of superconducting transitions, multiple
pairs of voltage lead lines (V2–4) are arranged along the super-
conducting part of the TMMC conductor. V3 represents the
voltage across the left superconducting section of the con-
ductor. During the experimental process, V4 indicates the ini-
tial occurrence of superconducting-to-normal transition in the
right superconducting part, concurrently accompanied by the
transition in V2. Meanwhile, the voltage across V3 remains
consistently at zero, signifying that the location of the super-
conducting transition is within the right superconducting seg-
ment represented by V4.
Figures 6(a) and (b) present data of currents and voltages
during the measurement processes. The resistance of the joints
on both sides is 110 nΩ and 140 nΩ, respectively. The voltages
are significantly increased when the TMMC transits from
superconducting to non-superconducting states. The measured
critical currents (I c ) of the 4-layer prototype TMMC at 77 K
under self-field and additional external 0.7 T are 13.69 kA and
10.58 kA, respectively.
5. Discussions
5.1. Enhancing conductor’s critical current density
Although the structure of concentric sub-conductors
connected by TM joints makes the conductor modularized
and easy to be assembled, the multiple formers influence the
conductor’s engineering critical current density compared
with the traditional stacked-tape conductors. And the engin-
eering critical current density is 55 A mm−2 in the slotted-core
conductor [11]. One can increase the engineering critical cur-
rent density by reducing the former’s thickness, while this is
limited considering of the former’s mechanical strength. For
example, the critical current and its density of the originally
manufactured TMMC with each-layer former’s thickness of
4.5 mm are predicted to be 15.33 kA and 11.06 A mm−2 ,
respectively. And if we reduce the former’s thickness to
2.0 mm, the two parameters are 13.93 kA and 36.64 A mm−2 ,
respectively.
Here, we discuss another approach that is cutting more
slots in the outer concentric formers based on the above pro-
posed structures so that fewer sub-conductors are needed, as
shown in figure 7. Taking the 2 mm-thickness former as an
example, we re-arrange the 4 stacks in the layer 4 into the
layer 2 and 3. After the enhancement, the conductor’s crit-
ical current at 77 K, self-field and its engineering critical
current density are 13.51 kA and 53.09 A mm−2 , which is
Supercond. Sci. Technol. 37 (2024) 065006 J Zheng et al

Figure 5. Ic measurement for TMMC: (a) DC source and the prototype TMMC; (b) Hall sensor and TMMC; (c) the voltage probes for
conductor.

Table 2. Parameters of DC experiment for I c measurement.

Parameters Value

DC source 100 kA
Voltage acquisition equipment EF721
Signal acquisition frequency 10 Hz
dI/dt 50 A s−1
V th 70 uV
Estimated I c 15 kA

comparable to the that of the unidirectional-stack conductor.
Besides, the diameter of the all formers in the enhanced con-
figuration is 18 mm, close to that of the slotted-core con-
ductor (diameter 19 mm) [11], therefore, bending the TMMC
to manufacture magnets is feasible. In the current design, the
enhanced TMMC’s engineering critical current density is sim-
ilar to that of the slotted-core conductor, but it can be signific-
antly improved with the approach of re-arranging the stacks
in the outer sub-conductors compared to the latter when the
conductor contains more tapes. Because more slots can be cut
in the larger-radius formers of TMMC to contain more tapes,
while the tapes can be only stacked in unidirectional direction
in the traditional slotted-core conductor.
To assess the bending radius of the TMMC conductor, the
mechanical simulations were conducted. In the actual layered
structure of the ReBCO tapes, it comprises superconducting
layers, silver layers, a Hastelloy alloy layer, copper layers,
and others. During modeling, the Y m , µ, α of HTS tape was
172 GPa, 0.33 and 13.2 × 10−6 K−1 . As figure 8, one end
of the conductor was tethered to a roller with the fixed radius
(1000 mm). The constraint between the HTS stack and the
surrounding copper former is modeled as frictional constraint
(friction factor = 0.2), allowing for slight slippage of the
REBCO tapes. This aligns with the actual manufacturing pro-
cess of the conductor. In practice, after the tape stack is inser-
ted into the slots of the former, a layer of copper tape is applied
to the surface. Simultaneously, as in TSTC cable, the cop-
per wires are used to fill the gaps between adjacent layers
of TMMC. In order to simulate the bending state of the con-
ductor when winding large superconducting coils, as depicted
in the figure 8(b), there are two wheels on either side of the
conductor used to fix and bend the conductor. It is worth not-
ing that both wheels are rigid bodies in the simulation and do
not undergo deformation or displacement. The surface at the
terminal of TMMC conductor is bound to the wheel below,
which rotate as the conductor bends. After the conductor has
been bent to 90◦ , the stress and strain of the internal tapes are
observed.

6
Supercond. Sci. Technol. 37 (2024) 065006 J Zheng et al

Figure 6. Ic of the prototype TMMC at 77 K: (a) Ic under self-field, (b) Ic under self-field and external 0.7 T.

Figure 7. Enhancing the conductor’s critical current density with less sub-conductors. The gray lines in every sub-conductor represent the
joints of the two half-circles. The width of the tapes is 4 mm. The diameter of the black circles decreases from 31 mm to 18 mm.

Figure 8. The simulation model for the bending behavior of TMMC (bending radius 1000 mm). The bending strain of tape 1 and tape 2
would represent the performance of the entire TMMC conductor.

The critical bending radius of the conductor is influ-
enced by the direction of bending. As depicted in the
figure 8(c), the surface of the superconducting tape near the
rigid wheel is perpendicular to the radial direction of the bend-
ing, while tape 1 is parallel to the direction of the bend-
ing. This implies that tape 1 will reach the critical strain
threshold more rapidly. Additionally, for ease of compar-
ison, during post-processing, particular emphasis is placed
on extracting the strain distribution and numerical values
of tape 1 and tape 2. The results of the bending simula-
tion, depicted in the figures 9 and 10, indicate that at a
bending radius of 1000 mm, the maximum strain in the strip
is −0.308%.
This approach enables a simplified representation of the
complex internal structure of the tapes for computational
efficiency, allowing for a focused analysis of the mech-
anical response under bending. But in a long conductor,
the tapes can be considered as bonded (friction = 1), then
the peak strain will reach 10 mm/1000 mm = 1.0% and
10 mm/600 mm = 1.7%. It elucidates the limit bending radii
exceeding one meter under the actual manufacturing process
of a long (>100 m) conductor.

7
Supercond. Sci. Technol. 37 (2024) 065006 J Zheng et al

Figure 9. The results of the mechanical analysis of the TMMC conductor under a 1000 mm bending radius: (a) the strain distribution of the
conductor (εmax = 0.68%); (b) the strain distribution of the tape 1 and tape 2 in figure 9 (εmax = 0.308%).

Figure 10. The results of the mechanical analysis of the TMMC conductor under a 600 mm bending radius: (a) the strain distribution of the
conductor (εmax = 0.71%); (b) the strain distribution of the tape 1 and tape 2 in figure 9 (εmax = 0.52%).

5.2. AC loss comparison study
For the operational conditions of TMMC in a fusion reactor,
magnetization loss constitutes a significant component. The
following investigation focuses on the hysteresis loss of TSTC
cable (1-layer) and TMMC (4-layer). These conductors are
positioned within a background magnetic field generated by a
magnet, with the central magnetic field being adjusted sequen-
tially by varying the current in the background magnet. The
internal current within the conductor is set to zero through-
out the experiment. The TMMC conductor contains 160
HTS tapes internally. Taking into consideration the compu-
tation time, a two-dimensional model is employed to calcu-
late hysteresis losses. In addition, simulating coupling losses
for ReBCO tapes with extremely high anisotropy is challen-
ging. Firstly, simulating coupling losses among the stacks
requires defining the transverse resistivity, which is influ-
enced by factors such as pressure and manufacturing pro-
cesses. Moreover, the numerous mesh points at the tape con-
tact locations result in a significant increase in the number of
elements. Therefore, this study focuses solely on hysteresis
losses in the ceramic layer.
During the T-A simulation, the peak intensity of the back-
ground magnetic field for the TMMC conductor reaches
10 Tesla. The direction of the external magnetic field is the
y-axis in figures 11(a)–(f). Since the transmission current is
zero, the Dirichlet boundary condition is employed to ensure
that the magnetic vector potential at both ends of the tape
remains at zero. As depicted in the figure 11(g) (Bmax = 10 T),
distinct from transmission loss, ReBCO tapes exhibit induced
currents under varying magnetic fields, particularly at the tape
edges where the current may exceed the critical current, lead-
ing to local flux quenching and consequent magnetization
losses. Conversely, the central portion of the tape manifests
comparatively smaller induced currents. In the presented res-
ults, for a multilayered conductor with a misorientation angle
of 45◦ , this specific arrangement results in an elevation of
magnetization losses. This phenomenon may be attributed to
the shielding effect of outer layers, causing the inner layers
to be exposed to the magnetic flux and consequently escalat-
ing losses. In light of this principle, we have adopted a more
dispersed arrangement for the outer layers of superconduct-
ing tapes. For instance, maintaining a constant total number of
tapes (160 superconducting tapes), each tape stack comprises

8
Supercond. Sci. Technol. 37 (2024) 065006 J Zheng et al

Figure 11. The magnetization loss with no transport current (Bmax = 10 T, ∆B/∆t = 0.2 T s−1 ): (a)–(c) the magnetic flux density norm of 1
layer of TSTC conductor, 3 layer of TMMC conductor and a better distribution of tape stacks in the outer layers of TMMC; (d)–(f) the J z /J c
of 1 layer of TSTC conductor, 3 layer of TMMC conductor and a better distribution of tape stacks in the outer layers of TMMC; (g) the
comparison of AC loss.

9
Supercond. Sci. Technol. 37 (2024) 065006 J Zheng et al

Figure 12. Distributions of normalized current density in conductors: (a)–(d) represent TMMCs (160 tapes) with 4.5 mm, 3.5 mm, 2.5 mm
and 2 mm formers, respectively. Figure (e) is the enhanced configuration based on the 2 mm former. Figure (f) represents the traditionally
unidirectional-stack conductor.

(w)[2 ]
only 5 HTS tapes, with a greater distribution of tape stacks in ehy = µ◦ Hm Hp ln (cosh θ) − tanh θ (θ ≡ Hm /Hp )
the outer layers. Due to the pronounced magnetic field vari- δ θ
ations, the outer-layer tapes suppress magnetic flux penetra- (1)
tion, leading to diminished magnetization losses in the inner
( )2
layers and, consequently, an overall reduction in ac loss. 1 Hm ( w )
Moreover, we have found a method to calculate the mag- ehy ≃ µ◦ H2m (0 ⩽ Hm ≪ Hp ) (2)
6 Hp δ
netization losses of TMMC conductor under high background
magnetic fields in [32]. Considering the relatively high aspect (w)
ratio of the ReBCO tapes, the formulas (1)–(3) from table 5.1 ehy ≃ µ◦ Hp (Hm − 2Hp ln 2) (Hm ≫ Hp ) . (3)
δ
on page 441 are used for the calculations. Additionally, the
external magnetic field is oriented perpendicular to the surface AC losses of the prototype TMMC with different radii
of the tape. The specific formulas (1)–(3) is provided below. are calculated under the same engineering current density.
Since the tapes within the TMMC conductor are arranged in The normalized current density distributions and ac losses of
multiple layers, with a total of 160 tapes, each HTS stack con- different conductors are shown in figure 12. Triangle-wave
taining 10 tapes is considered as a unified entity. The calcu- currents (500 A s−1 ) are applied in the whole conductor.
lated results from the formula indicate that, at a background Therefore, non-even current distributions are considered.
magnetic field intensity of 10 T, the magnetization losses for a From figure 12, it can be seen that the imposed currents are
single tape stack amount to 842.32 J m−3 , thus resulting in a mostly distributed in the outmost tapes, and the current pen-
total magnetization loss of 13 477.13 J m−3 . To facilitate com- etration becomes shallower with the TMMC’s former redu-
parison with the simulation results, the numerical value of the cing. As shown in figure 13. With the former of sub-conductor
calculated AC losses obtained from the formula is divided by decreasing by 1 mm, the peak loss of TMMC reduces by more
the cross-sectional area, resulting in a final value of 0.86 J m−1 . than 75%. And among all the conductors, the enhanced con-
It is evident that this numerical value is lower than the results figuration based on the 2 mm former achieves the minimum
obtained from the T-A model (about 4 J m−1 of one cycle). ac losses. Due to the increased engineering critical current
We speculate that this discrepancy may be attributed to the density, the peak loss reduces by 57% compared with the non-
arrangement of HTS stacks of TMMC conductors, enhanced 2 mm former TMMC.

10
Supercond. Sci. Technol. 37 (2024) 065006
Figure 13. AC losses comparisons of TMMCs with different radii and traditionally unidirectional stack’s conductor under the same
carrying current density.
6. Conclusions
In this paper, a new kind of HTS MC concept is proposed,
in which the conductor consists of multiple concentric half-
circle sub-conductors connected by Chinese traditional TM
structure. Therefore, the proposed HTS conductor is referred
as TMMC. Innovatively, the REBCO stacks are arranged
by the fully-disaligned configurations of the adjacent sub-
conductors, which benefits for improving the isotropy of con-
ductor’s critical current on magnetic field and reducing ac loss.
According to the design concept, prototype TMMCs are
manufactured. The measured critical currents of 1-layer and
4-layer TMMCs are 4.012 kA and 13.69 kA, respectively, at
77 K and self-field, which are close to the predicted values of
4.072 kA and 15.328 kA.
In order to further improve the TMMC’s engineering crit-
ical current density (J ce ) and bending performance, we pro-
pose two enhancement approaches to reduce TMMC’s radius:
reducing the former’s thickness and re-arrange stacks in the
outer sub-conductors. With the enhancements, the TMMC’s
J ce is increased by four times. The TMMC’s radius, J ce and ac
losses are comparable to the unidirectional-stack conductor,
which makes it feasible to construct magnets.
With the advantages of non-twisted structures, easy
assembly, high-current carrying capacity and low ac losses,
the proposed TMMC is promising for constructing large-scale
scientific devices. And we are planning to implement more
tests to verify the performances of TMMC and promote it to
be employed more widely.
Data availability statement
The data cannot be made publicly available upon publication
because the cost of preparing, depositing and hosting the data
would be prohibitive within the terms of this research project.
11
J Zheng et al
The data that support the findings of this study are available
upon reasonable request from the authors.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China General Program 52077211, by the
National Science Found for Excellent Young Scholars of
China 52222701, and by the Anhui Province Key Research
and Development Plan 2022i01020019.
ORCID iD
Jinxing Zheng  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4624-0571
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