Constant Field Toroidal SMES Magnet

Abstract

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been performing a preliminary study of superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES) magnet configurations under a Pole MecaTech Cluster collaboration sponsored by the government of the Walloon Region in Belgium. Consortium members include Ion Beam Applications S.A. (IBA), CE+T Power (CE+T), Euro-Diesel S.A. (Euro-Diesel), Jema S.A. (JEMA), the University of Liege (ULG), the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve (UCL), and the Liege Space Center (CSL). The goal of the project was to assess the commercial feasibility of various SMES magnet configurations by evaluating specific energy, magnetic field shielding properties, and manufacturing cost. Among the examined configurations, the constant field toroid (CFT) attracted our attention, and it is the subject of this paper. The present study presents the description of the magnetic design algorithm and an example of the first-level optimization of the stored and specific energy. Numerical simulations are performed using Cobham Opera. A procedure of a simplified analytical optimization of a magnet system is used to maximize the stored energy or the specific energy (per unit weight of the conductor) of a CFT magnet.