AMERICAN SUPERCONDUCTOR CORPORATION — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: N181-041

Description

Today’s Navy continues to see increased demand for more power applied from both on and off the ship. This need is largely driven by the continued development of high power density advanced weapons systems and sensors. Continued space and weight limitations for these ship applications will drive the need for new power solutions to be light and compact, easing installation on new ships and enabling upgrades on existing ones.To meet this need, highly efficient methods of transferring large amounts of power are being investigated by NSWC Carderock in Philadelphia through the use of High Temperature Superconductors (HTS). HTS technology provides dramatically increased current density over conventional conductors, but they do require cryogenic cooling to achieve the superconducting state. Low power Stirling based cryocoolers have been developed by the Navy to cool superconducting cables in low voltage DC applications such as degaussing. AC power cable applications will require larger capacity cryocoolers to manage the thermal loads associated with large input currents as well as the AC losses associated with superconductors during AC power transfer. These larger coolers will also need to be more efficient then their lower capacity predecessors if shipboard implementation is to be achieved.