Efficient multiscale investigation of mechanical behavior in Nb3Sn superconducting accelerator magnet based on self-consistent clustering analysis

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

The High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) is one of the large-scale projects currently being developed at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). Many Nb3Sn superconducting magnets are employed in this project, which exhibit complicated multiscale characteristics. The mechanical behaviors of magnets, which are directly related to the safety and stability of the overall structure, are affected by the electromagnetic–mechanical-thermal loading in actual service conditions. However, detailed modeling of magnets requires significant computing resources. A reduced-order method named self-consistent clustering analysis (SCA) has been proposed recently to reduce the cost. We have combined the SCA and finite element method (FEM) as an efficient multiscale framework, which is utilized to analyze the mechanical behaviors of accelerator magnets. Firstly, the computation results by presented framework are compared with direct numerical simulation (DNS) and existed experimental data to validate the accuracy and efficiency. Then, the FEM-SCA2 framework is utilized to study the mechanical behaviors of MQXFS accelerator magnet model under assembly, cool-down and excitation steps. The influences of material parameters, friction coefficient and stiffness degradation are also discussed. This paper provides an efficient multiscale analysis framework for investigating mechanical behavior in Nb3Sn accelerator magnet, which could be employed to study other magnets.