Experimental and Simulation Study of Resistive Helical HTS Fault Current Limiters: Quench and Recovery Characteristics

Resistive type fault current limiters (SFCLs) have attracted lots of attention from research interests and engineering applications, due to their self-triggering, fast and effective fault current limitation ability. Fast recovery of SFCL after quench is highly attractive, yet still remains challenge when recover with load compared to recovering without load. We investigated the dependence of recovery time of a helical SFCL coil on the ratio of prospective current over critical current I-pros/I-c. A multilayer simulation model was built in MATLAB/Simulink to investigate the electro-thermal behavior of SFCL coil during a fault and recovery period, and the model was validated by experimental results. Quench simulations were carried out under different I-pros/I-c, ranging from 15 to 119 and in different recovery conditions including recovery with load condition and recovery without load condition, while keeping the fault duration of 100 ms. We observed that the SFCL coil reached 85 K and 195 K at the time when the fault was cleared, in the quench tests with I-pros/I-c = 15 and 119, respectively. SFCL coil recovered without load in 0.5 s to 10 s, depending on the ratio of Ipros/Ic.