  The electrical properties of superconducting tapes and coatings in the
direction transverse to the long dimension of the composite has been rarely
studied. However, transverse dissipation can eventually determine the behavior
of a transmission line in the case of failure due to the presence of
transversal cracks, and is also fundamental in the AC regime. In this paper we
present a preliminary experimental study of the electrical transport properties
along the transverse direction of BSCCO-metal tapes, and compare them with
those measured along the long axis of the material. In spite of the fact that
the tapes under study are not multi-filamentary, our experiments suggest that
there is a measurable anisotropy of the transport properties between the
longitudinal and transverse directions.

Superconductivity