Cloud-based simulation of high-temperature superconducting cables in the power industry

The unique characteristics of High Temperature Superconductor (HTS) materials require specific design tools to better understand and optimize their function in devices and systems. These design tools must deal with mechanical, thermal and electromagnetic parameters and performances of the superconductors, allowing a simplification of the design process and increasing the ability of new engineers to access this new technology and its correspondent market. Both time dependences in the HTS material modelling and strong nonlinearity of materials leads to a very complex and time consuming computing process. HPC (High Performance Computing) tools as FEMPAR (Finite Element Multi-physics and massively PARallel software package) should be available for an efficient design of devices and systems based on superconductivity. From the point of view of the developers of superconducting materials, products and applications, the implementation of a flexible and powerful 3D design tool is indispensable. This allows designers to deal with superconducting components and their behaviour when integrated in systems. The opening of the market of superconducting devices is contributing to the need of higher operating capacity for computing and modelling efficiently in medium and large scale. The design requires a multi-physics scope including thermal, electromagnetic and mechanical studies where all of them interact because the dependence of the HTS materials on the three types of physics. FORTISSIMO has successfully contributed to the first steps in the development of such a kind of computing tool and an experienced team able to continue in the enhancement of its abilities. The contribution of HPC centre has been key in providing the necessary facilities for development.