Fabrication of Long-Length Nb3Al Wire by the Metastable Solid-Solution-Strand Restacking Method.

This paper describes two subjects, both aimed at the industrialization of Nb3Al conductors. One is the metastable solid-solution-strand restacking method, which is expected to be a low-cost Cu-stabilization method compared with the electroplating technique. In this paper, we mainly focus on recent efforts toward long-length production. The key point here is an improvement of the contact between the Cu tube and the restacked original strands. The second subject is the first attempt at “constant voltage” control in the continuous rapid-heating and quenching operation for 300-m-class precursor wire. With constant current control, changes in the diameter of the wire lead to variations in power per unit volume, so that the processing temperature changes. With constant voltage control, changes in diameter of the wire do not lead to changes in the power per unit volume, so that the processing temperature does not change and thus the uniformity of the longitudinal performance is improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]