Effect of Hydraulic Impedance on the Cool Down of Superconducting Magnet System of ITER

Abstract

ITER has a large superconducting magnet system with about 10,000 tons of cold mass to be maintained at about 4.5 K during magnet operation. This cold mass has to be cooled down from ~300 to 4.5 K simultaneously and uniformly to avoid high thermal stress. More than 5,000 tons of cold mass corresponds to steel structures to support the gravity and electromagnetic forces. A controlled cool down is necessary to avoid high thermal stress in these materials. The variations of hydraulic impedances and cold masses of different magnet components play a major role in making the cool down non-uniform if appropriate control strategies are absent. A detailed analysis has been done to quantify the factors preventing a uniform cool down. The slowest cooling component will dictate the cool down rate of the whole magnet system. The analysis finds the maximum cool down rates possible for different components and controlled flow rate required for different components to have uniform cool down of all components. Based on this, the cool down rates and duration have been found. This paper will discuss details of these analysis results.