Magnetic Field and Strain Measurements of a Superconducting Solenoid Magnet for C-ADS Injector-II During Excitation and Quench Test

Abstract

A superconducting solenoid magnet has been fabricated and tested for the Accelerator Driven System (ADS), which is a dedicated burner reactor in a double strata fuel cycle to incinerate nuclear waste, at the Institute of Modern Physics of Chinese Academy of Science (IMPCAS). The magnetic field of the superconducting solenoid was measured with hall probes during the magnet excitation and spontaneous quench test. The strains in the superconducting solenoid magnet and its cryogenic support structures were measured by using a compensation bridge of low-temperature strain gauges and a wireless strain acquisition system. The transient strains and their abrupt changes were recorded and compared with the collected signals of the transport current and temperature of the superconducting solenoid during a spontaneous quench test. It indicates that, not only the mechanical behaviors of the superconducting solenoid and the support structures during the excitation can be captured effectively, but also the quench feature can be detected with observations of abrupt strain variations as a quench occurs. The predictions of the magnetic and strain field by means of a coupled finite element analysis were also performed and compared with the experimental measurements resulting in a good agreement.