Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. In order to elucidate the effect of uniaxial strain on the critical current of practical REBCO tapes (REBa2Cu3O7-d, RE = Y and Gd) fabricated by Superpower and SuNAM, two types of critical current measurements were carried out. In the first, the tape sample was attached directly to a universal testing machine and pulled under a tensile load. In the second, the tape was soldered to a Cu-Be springboard (SB) and then attached to the testing machine and then pushed or pulled in order to apply both tensile and compressive strains to the tape sample. An inverse parabolic behavior was observed for the uniaxial strain dependence of the critical current of both tapes.Using synchrotron radiation, the local strain exerted on the REBCO layer was measured at room temperature under the conditions used for the two techniques for making Ic measurements. On the basis of these room temperature data, the local strain exerted on the REBCO layer at 77 K was numerically evaluated.A one-dimensional chain model for current flow in the REBCO material with fractional lengths of A-domains and B-domains oriented along the uniaxial strain direction is proposed. The model can explain the parabolic strain behavior of the critical current and shows that the strain at which the peak in Ic occurs, is not only determined by pre-compression or pre-tension on the superconductor at the operating temperature, but also by the ratio of the fractional amounts of the two domains.