Pressure Drop Measurements Performed on a Cable in Conduit Conductor (CICC) at a New Facility Developed to Study Thermo-Hydraulic Characterization

The recent trends in High Temperature Superconductor (HTS) development and HTS based applications have led to the exploration of various methods for achieving cryogenic temperature suitable for the superconducting cables and magnet characterization. An existing test facility at ITER-India has been augmented to deliver 80 K helium for testing, particularly for thermo-hydraulic characterization of superconducting cables. Such characterization is very important for the prediction of performance during operation to ensure adequate mass flow rate through the cable for heat load removal and to maintain the cable stability. The facility is capable of supporting the test on a superconducting short sample at 80 K with a mass flow rate up to 35 g/s and pressure up to 7 bar(a) using helium as a fluid. The functional acceptance of the developed test facility has been performed with the first experiment conducted on a short coiled shaped mock sample cable-in-conduit conductor (CICC). The longitudinal friction factor obtained from the measurement has been compared with the existing correlations for Reynolds number ranging between 50-400. The wound CICC short sample has been analyzed using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) approach, considering the bundled region as a porous media to cover a wide range of various thermo-hydraulic and geometrical parameters involved in the test sample. A comparison of the experimental and the CFD simulation results is presented.