A round robin test for pre-standardization of a saddle-shaped pickup coil method to measure AC losses in Bi-2223 Ag-sheathed tapes

We performed a round robin test to measure AC losses in Bi-2223 Ag-sheathed tapes with saddle-shaped pickup coils in an alternating perpendicular magnetic field at liquid nitrogen temperature. Two laboratories participated in the round robin test with each system of the pickup coil and the measurement circuit. Short specimens of a Bi-2223 tape and a copper magnet to generate the alternating magnetic field were used for common conditions in the test. The saddle-shaped pickup coils were made under recommended conditions for the structure and the sizes that give a calibration coefficient around unity. The signals of the magnetic moment from the pickup coils were calibrated by using a standard hairpin copper tape. AC losses of the common specimen of the Bi-2223 tape were measured in the round robin test in the ranges of frequency up to 60 Hz and the amplitude up to 0.2 T of perpendicular magnetic field. While we had only two participants in the test, we obtained the following results in a pre-standardization process of the AC loss measurement with the saddle-shaped pickup coil (i) it was suggested from the calibration procedure using hairpin copper tape that the deviations from numerical simulation for an ideal pickup coil and a sufficiently long specimen is within 3% on an average, (ii) the values of COV for the AC losses measured at 1 Hz and 10 Hz are less than about 3% in the range of the field amplitude between 0.02 T and 0.2 T.