TRANSPORT CURRENT DEPENDENCE OF THE HYSTERISIS LOSS IN SILVER-SHEATHED BSCCO-2212 CONDUCTORS

A technique is described to study the critical current density and penetration field associated with the transport current in a silver sheathed BSCCO conductor. A transport current flowing in a conductor in a varying magnetic field will only influence magnetisation currents that are in competition with the transport current, i.e, currents that use the same path. By measuring the transport current dependence of the magnetisation loss information can be obtained on the related critical current and penetration field. The combination of these two quantities contains information about the geometry of the current distribution and can be used to test different models for the current distribution in BSCCO conductors.