Electromagnetic properties analysis on superconducting magnet coil for magnetoplasmadymamic thruster

In engineering applications, the traditional water-cooled copper magnet coils providing applied field have many defects such as large volume, big mass and high power dissipation, so the application of tiny volume and small mass high temperature superconductor (HTS) coils on applied-field magnetoplasmadynamic thruster (AF-MPDT) is focused on. An HTS coil by Bi-2333/Ag was designed to satisfy the demand of 0.2 T center magnetic field strength which consists of three double pancake coils. The HTS coil is 30 mm in height, with a 160 mm inner diameter. To study the electromagnetic properties of the coil, a critical current testing system was built based on the principle of electric transport method. The experimental results show that different pancakes have different critical current I_C, and middle pancake has the highest I_C value. The iron plates have positive influence on the coil electromagnetic properties, and can improve I_C value by 42%. Meanwhile, using electromagnetic simulation method, the effect of iron plates size and position on the performances of the HTS coil was researched, and an optimized design was summarized.