Evaluation of layered Nb3Sn conductor

In the past several years, considerable progress has been made in developing a low loss superconductor for use in a 60 Hz ac power transmission line. In particular, work by Snowden, et al.[1] has indicated the possibility of exploiting conductor configurations attainable by thin film evaporation techniques to achieve critical currents and ac loss characteristics superior to that of bulk materials. In this paper, we describe instrumentation which has been designed to test conductors fabricated by the evaporation technique and present some of our first results on these materials.