High quality, ex-situ powder-in-tube (PIT) Introduction Nowadays, superconductivity has a significant impact on many technological sectors, for example in the production of electric motors and magnetic sensors as well as in the energy transmission and storage technology. Superconducting wires and tapes are the key product for the adoption of this high technology, but the selection of a suitable superconducting material is not an easy task. MgB 2 is in general a low cost superconductor compared to other ceramic high T c materials, with a transition temperature near the liquid hydrogen boiling point. It has been estimated that approximately 15% of the generated electricity is dissipated during power transportation. In that respect, MgB 2 can be used for the construction of zero loss superconducting transmission lines, where liquid hydrogen may serve as refrigeration medium. The production of wires, coils and tapes requires forming at very high pressures due to the poor formability of the extremely hard ceramic superconductors. For this reason, the powder-in-tube (PIT) explosive compaction technique is considered to be a very promising powder metallurgy forming process for the fabrication of near full density MgB 2 superconductors as given in The present work is concerned with the optimization of the explosive compaction process, incorporating MgB 2 powders. The optimization is performed on an LS-DYNA numerical simulation model of the explosive compaction, where the external diameter of the tube and the dimensions (length and diameter) of the explosive surrounding of the PIT are used as input parameters. The peak pressure, peak maximum principal stress, porosity, uniformity of the tube radius, and mass of the explosive, are the corresponding simulation outputs, with the porosity being the most important parameter to optimize, since it is directly related to the interparticle bonding of the compact which affects the critical current density of the superconductor. Numerical Simulation of Explosively Densified PIT MgB Powders The shock consolidation process of the superconducting powders is numerically simulated using the LSDYNA finite element code. Since the PIT sample deformation during explosive loading is considered to be axisymmetric, a quarter 3D explicit finite element model is developed which is sufficient to accurately simulate the compaction procedure reducing this way the computational time. The finite element model mesh together with the corresponding experimental setup are demonstrated i
