Influence of transversal compressive strain on degradation of Bi2223 tapes

This paper presents degradation of critical currents ( I/sub c/) owing to transversal-compressive force to bismuth tapes. We applied the compressive force perpendicular to the Bi-2223 tape surface, and measured dependence of I/sub c/ and n-values on the force. Contact configurations of pushing parts to the tape are face and line contacts. According to the experimental results, decreasing of the I/sub c/ was large when the damaged area on the compressed tape was small. That is, degradation in the line-contact experiments was larger than that in the face-contact experiments. It was experimentally demonstrated that the I/sub c/ degradation due to the transversal-compressive force strongly depended on the length of the damaged segments along the tapes.