The Electrical Resistance of Rutherford-Type Superconducting Cable Splices

The electrical resistance of Large Hadron Collider main busbar cable lap splices produced by soft soldering has been measured with two independent methods as a function of intercable contact area and for splices made of cables with various defects. For defect-free lap splices, the resistance increases from 0.3 to 10 nΩ (at 4.3 K in self-field) when reducing the cable overlap length from 120 to 3 mm, as expected assuming that the resistance is inversely proportional to the intercable contact area. The resistance of bridge splices that connect side-by-side cables can be predicted from the lap splice resistances and the overlap areas involved.