Quench and thermal recovery in a superconducting fault current limiter with artificial weak zones

We report results on the behaviour of an inductive fault current limiter prototype with weak zones artificially created. The superconducting elements are Bi-2223 rings and the tests have been realized with the device on a Helium gas environment at 77.3 K. We found that the artificial weak zones can play the main role during the limitation under a current fault and on the thermal recovery process after the fault, which could be used to improve the performance of these devices. Our results show also that the artificial weak zones could balance, in addition, the influence of other natural defects which could lead to non-uniform normal-superconducting transitions, the formation of hot spots, etc.