An introduction to the design and fabrication progress of a megawatt class 2G HTS motor for the ship propulsion application

Abstract

This paper introduces the design and fabrication progress of a megawatt class 2G high temperature superconductor (HTS) motor for the ship propulsion application at Doosan Heavy Industries and Construction. The purpose of this 2G HTS propulsion motor is to launch the business area for marine applications such as surface ship, submarine, merchant ship etc. The principles and interpretation of the magnetic field for 2G HTS motor and permanent magnet type motors are similar on the basis of 3D design and production. The most important component of an HTS motor is the rotor, which is composed of HTS coil, non-ferrous metal, torque disk, damper, and hollow shaft. A HTS rotor using hastelloy-based 2G HTS coils was designed and built. Open-circuit and short-circuit characteristics of the superconducting motor were investigated and compared with the analysis results at reduced excitation to verify the design. Preliminary testing of a 2G HTS motor has been conducted at a few hundred kilowatts as per the design. Through these results, we anticipate that most of the design criteria can be satisfied. However, we have faced several issues during the testing of the motor and these issues need to be resolved in order to take the design further.

Engineering current density over 5 kA mm−2 at 4.2 K, 14 T in thick film REBCO tapes

“…Rare earth barium copper oxide (REBCO) coated conductors (CC) have a tremendous potential for numerous applications such as fusion reactor magnets, high energy particle accelerators, generators, motors, superconducting magnetic energy storage, and magnetic resonance imaging over a broad temperature range of 4-77 K in high magnetic fields of 2-30 T, due to their high critical temperature, high irreversibility field and high critical current density [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. Several research and development projects are ongoing to develop high-field magnets with insert coils of REBCO, due to its high current carrying capability in high background fields [11][12][13][14].…”

Multidisciplinary analysis of the transient performance of a 20 kW class HTS induction/synchronous motor cooled with a cryocooler and gaseous air-gap coolant

“…The Kawasaki Heavy Industries group (Japan) has successfully completed development of a 3 MW class ship propulsion motor, in which the HTS field windings are cooled by circulating helium gas [5]. In addition, the Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction group (Korea) has been developing a MW class ship propulsion motor using rare-earth barium copper oxide (REBCO) tapes [6]. Finally, a research group at Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology (Japan) has attempted to apply a bulk HTS in a ship propulsion motor [7].…”

Superconducting Super Motor and Generator

“…Perhaps the greatest advancements to date have been in the area of low rotation speed ship propulsion motors, where a power-to-weight ratio of about 0.5 kW/kg has been reported with a rotor wound from high temperature superconductor. This is an improvement by a factor of about five compared to a conventional motor, even though conventional copper air-core windings were employed on the stator, and a cryogenic cooling system, based on gaseous helium, is required [2], while several new designs and approaches are currently in progress [3,4,5].…”