Internal Quench of Superconducting Magnets by the Use of AC Fields

Abstract

The sensitivity of superconducting magnets to AC losses is well known. If superconducting magnets are this sensitive to AC fields, why not use AC fields for magnet protection, and in particular, for internal energy dump when a quench has been detected? The answer is the large reactive power needed to provide the rate of change of the fields required to quench of a large fraction of the magnet. In this paper we describe a novel approach where quench protection secondary windings external to the magnet are used to minimize the power to initiate the energy dump. The main requirement of these secondary windings is that the mutual inductance between the primary winding and the protection secondary windings has to be small, ideally zero. One means to provide for zero mutual inductance between the protection secondary winding and the primary winding is by designing a protection secondary winding that produces AC fields that everywhere in the volume are normal to the fields produced by the primary winding. Alternatively, appropriate windings can be made so that the coupling in one region is the opposite to that of another region, with zero total mutual inductance. The latter approach results in low voltages at the leads, but could result in high voltages within the coil. We describe several circuit topologies applicable to solenoidal and toroidal windings that satisfy these requirements. Calculations of the heating due to AC fields are presented, including eddy current heating in cable-in-copper-channel conductors. If the quench inducing coil is optimally designed and powered, the hysteresis of the superconductor dominates the heating. Thus, as a portion of the superconducting magnet quenches, the heating power shifts to those zones that are not yet in the current-sharing regime. This approach is an alternative to the use of resistive heating elements, which need to be placed on, or embedded in, the winding pack.