Products

Overview : Elastic Memory Composite (EMC) Material : Electrical Insulation : Composite Pressure Vessels : CryoCoat™ Thermal Insulation : CryoBond™ Adhesives & Coatings : High Temperature Heaters

Electrical Insulation

CTD’s engineered electrical insulation products are used for numerous applications, including conventional and superconducting magnets and other superconducting devices such as motors, generators, transformers, and power storage devices. While CTD’s electrical insulation products can be used for general-purpose insulation applications, many are developed to operate in extreme conditions, including cryogenic and high temperatures, radiation, and space environments. CTD’s electrical insulation products are supplied as liquids, pastes, pre-impregnated glass fibers (prepreg), B-staged adhesives on polyimide or other films, and high-pressure laminates. CTD’s insulation materials are based on polymers (including epoxies, cyanate esters, and their hybrids), ceramics, and polymer-ceramic hybrids. This wide range of product forms and base chemistries enables CTD to provide insulation materials suitable for most coil designs and fabrication processes. CTD’s capability and experience enables us to provide custom-tailored insulation materials in addition to our standard products.

CTD’s products have been used worldwide in a variety of commercial and research applications. CTD is the world leader in electrical insulation materials for research magnets exposed to radiation environments (for fusion and high energy physics applications). Some notable successes achieved through the use of CTD’s electrical insulation materials include:

• The world record highest field dipole magnet (>14 Tesla), developed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for high energy physics applications, utilizes CTD-101 epoxy insulation material.
  
• The mechanical properties of CTD’s new cyanate ester-based insulation materials do not degrade after radiation exposure >3 x 1010 Rads.
  
• The ITER Central Solenoid (CS) Model Coil, the world’s largest ramping magnet field coil, was successfully demonstrated to 13 Tesla during Spring 2000. This coil uses CTD-112P prepreg insulation. CTD developed the insulation, performed validation testing, and developed and proved the “in-field” application process.
  
• A superconducting coil fabricated by General Atomics for Navy minesweeping applications used CTD-521 with added fillers in a wet winding fabrication process. The customer commented that:
  
  “We were quite happy with the workable characteristics of the epoxy when applying the wet lay-up method. We energized the magnet to full rated field on cryocooler power with no training quenches! Subsequently, we (GA) force-quenched the magnet at full field three times by turning off the cryocooler, and no damage occurred. The scrutiny we applied in choosing the type of epoxy has certainly paid off.”
  
  
• The very long pot-life of CTD-101 has enabled the impregnation of several unique research magnets to be interrupted and resumed as much as 48 hours later. In all cases, these magnets met their design performance criteria.

CTD has developed a co-processed ceramic/epoxy hybrid insulation system with increased radiation resistance. This new material is revolutionizing the manufacturing of superconducting magnets using conductors such as niobium tin, which undergo a high temperature heat treatment processes. CTD’s CO-processed insulation material enables the coil be made into a monolithic structure immediately after winding, and remain such throughout the heat treatment and epoxy impregnation processes. This significantly reduces fabrication risk and cost. The low thermal expansion and high thermal conductivity of this insulation also improve coil performance.
With the support of the US Department of Energy and industry collaborators, CTD is continually developing new and improved insulation materials.

Contact us to see how our insulation products, experience, and technology can be employed in the successful insulation of your electrical coils and devices.

View the Technical Resources for CTD’s engineered electrical insulation products