Thermal Stability and AC Losses in High-Field Superconducting Magnets

The study and the analysis of quench initiation and propagation is of paramount importance in the design of any superconducting magnets. Several disturbances such as ac losses, failures of the cryogenics or heat load may induce the quench initiation on a magnet and determine its irreversible transition to the normal state. Since the early days of magnet construction, the scientific community has devoted significant efforts in the study of quench. In the present work, numerical methodologies are presented and discussed for the analysis of electro-thermal stability, quench propagation and temperature margin on superconducting cables and coils. The proposed models are applied to the analysis of several superconducting magnets under development in different research groups in Europe (EU) and United States (US). The comparison of the numerical results with the experimental tests or with different computational approaches make the author confident about the applicability and reliability of the proposed modelling techniques.