Quench Behavior, Quench Protection of a YBCO Test Coil Assembly

This work aimed to study the quench behavior of a test coil assembly consisting of pancake coils. Parameters such as the quench energy and the normal zone propagation velocity, which are useful in designing detection and protection systems for real-life HTS devices, have been measured. The goal is to define the limit of the applicability of commercial YBCO wire technologies, usually referred to as second generation (2G), used to wind superconducting devices. To go beyond the stability characterization, an active protection scheme has been designed, integrated to the test coil assembly and tested as well.