Speaker
Description
Different magnetic confinement fusion projects, as SPARC, STEP, and EU DEMO among others, will (or are considering to) employ High Temperature Superconductors (HTS) in their magnet system, due to the possibility to generate an higher magnetic field if compared to Low Temperature Superconductors (LTS), which are considered the state of the art in superconductors.
Even if HTS would increase magnet performance, this technology presents a well-known issue on the quench, i.e., the Normal Zone (NZ) propagation is slower if compared to the LTS one, causing the present quench detection approaches to be less effective, since these are developed for LTS-based magnets.
The non-insulated (NI) configuration of HTS could be a way to further increase the current density of the coil and possibly to self-protect the HTS against quench, even though this behavior still needs to be fully addressed. Modeling NI coils is important to fully understand the complex behavior of the magnet and to predict its response.
In this work, a 3D model of a NI multi-turn coil made by HTS tapes is developed in STAR-CCM+. The model is used to simulate electromagnetic behavior of the coil with self-inductance and is validated against available experimental data; then the capability to address thermal phenomena is also added to the model, with the possibility to address in perspective other relevant physics, i.e. mechanics. This model represents a further step towards the reliable modeling of a non-insulated HTS magnet.
