A Study on Normal Zone Propagation Behavior of Partially Insulated GdBCO Coil

This paper reports the quench initiation and propagation characteristics of two GdBCO single-pancake coils, one wound with Kapton tape every two turns and the other completely wound with Kapton tape, to investigate the effect of a partial insulation (PI) winding technique. The thermal/electrical stabilities of the PI coil were improved by turn-to-turn contacts between the partially uninsulated turns, leading to an increased minimum quench energy. Furthermore, transverse normal zone propagation velocities of the PI coil increased because local heat was well transferred through uninsulated turns during quench events.