Experimental and numerical study of influence of ferromagnetic cover on critical current of BiSCCO-2223/Ag tape superconductor

Samples of commercially available BiSCCO-2223/Ag tape have been partially covered by the ferromagnetic material. Improvement of the self-field critical current up to 15 % has been achieved by this procedure. A critical current of such tape strongly depends on geometric and magnetic properties of both, the superconducting tape as well as the ferromagnetic cover. Numerical simulations, based on the critical state model using commercial finite element method (FEM) code, have been performed. Properties of superconductor are characterized by anisotropic dependence of the critical current density on magnetic field as well as detail geometry of filaments. The ferromagnetic material is characterized by nonlinear magnetization curve. Nonlinear dependences of the critical current on selected parameters are shown in this work. Optimization of the cover parameters using these curves has been made. Samples with various parameters have been manufactured for the confirmation of numerical simulations results. Experimental results are in good qualitative agreement with results obtained by numerical simulations.