Magnetic Measurements for Magnets Manufacturing Tolerances Assessment

Abstract

Superconducting high field magnets are tightly constrained in terms of field quality, since such magnets are usually designed to perform quite demanding tasks, such as focusing particle beams in accelerators, plasma confinement and shaping in fusion devices, and polarizing actions in magnetic resonance. In all these cases, small discrepancies of field map from the design values may strongly impact on device performance. As a consequence, quality insurance procedures are needed to verify if each single coil meets such criteria, e.g., using laser tracking, and possibly warm magnetic measurements. As a matter of fact, external magnetic measurements can be used to estimate the possible deformations of conductors inside the magnet, but this implies inverse problem approaches. The field probes accuracy is therefore critical, and the measurement system must be carefully designed, taking into account the probe characteristics, but also the characteristics of the windings and of the surrounding environment. In this paper, different measurement techniques are compared in terms of sensitivity and accuracy, with reference to various types of sensors and of measurement schemes.