Modelling stability in superconducting cables

Stability is one of the key issues in the design of a superconductor, and indeed deserves much attention in the magnet design and analysis. Stability-oriented design procedures and calculations involve the detailed knowledge of the response of the cable to thermal, fluid dynamic and electric transient phenomena that are difficult to tackle analytically in cables. This has justified a significant numerical modelling effort in the field. This paper reviews basic stability models and presents selected advances in the methods developed and results obtained. A unified, semi-continuum model is proposed for stability analysis of cables. The time scales of relevance during stability transients are identified and analysed.