NUMERICAL SOLUTIONS OF THE CURRENT DISTRIBUTION IN SUPERCONDUCTING RECTANGULAR CABLES

Cables are used in several technical applications such as accelarators, SMES and fusion projects. In all of these applications we find that a cable is placed in a combination of a transverse and a longitudinal applied field. Furthermore, we can define the problem periodical along the axis of the cable, because of the solinoidal or toroidal shape of the magnet. We will derive a simple numerical method for calculating the current distribution in a rectangular cable, where a cable is approximated by a small layer of wires with a nonconducting inner region, where the internal structure of the wire is neglected. A general outline for the unsaturated stationairy problem is given, but the described method can also be applied for instationary situations or cases were saturated regions may be expected.