Experimental Study on Quench Detection of a No-Insulation HTS Coil Based on Raman-Scattering Technology in Optical Fiber

In the high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets applications, fast quench detection is very important to protect the magnets from burning out. Usually, the method of voltage measurement is widely applied to detect quench. However, this method is not satisfied for large HTS magnets intrinsically. Besides, a novel quench detection, which is measured by Raman-scattering-based distributed temperature sensors (DTS) using flexible optical fibers, is suggested to be a potential candidate. To verify the feasibility of this method, we prepared a DTS system based on interrogating Raman-scattering signals and a no-insulation (NI) HTS coil mounted by a 2-m length optical fiber as a test sample. The main results show that critical current of the NI coil is 111 A. In the continued overcurrent-induced quench state under coil current of 160 A, the temperature rise was observed obviously at the position of 1.2 m in the optical fiber, and the temperature was up to 94 K in the near middle region of top surface in the NI coil.