  We present experimental results on the behaviour of a superconducting YBCO/Au
meander of length L submitted to short circuit tests with constant voltage
pulses. The meander, at the beginning of the short-circuit, is divided in two
regions; one, with a length L1 proportional to the applied voltage, which first
switches into a highly dissipative state (HDS) while the rest remains
superconducting. Then the rest of the meander will progressively switch into
the normal state due to the propagation of this HDS (few m/s) from both ends.
The part L1 has to initially support a power density proportional to r.Jp^2 (r
is the resistivity of the bilayer and Jp the peak current density). To avoid
local excessive dissipation of power and over heating on one part of the wafer
in the initial period, we have developed a novel design in order to distribute
the dissipating section of the meander into many separated small dissipative
zones. Furthermore the apparent propagation velocity of these dissipative zones
is increased by the number of propagation fronts. We will show results obtained
on 3kW (300V, 10A) FCL on a 2" wafer which confirm the benefits of this new
design.
