11T Superconducting accelerator dipole magnet

21 Jun, 2021

The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) is planning to use shorter magnets to make room in its tunnel for new instruments that will help narrow the particle beam, protecting the LHC ring from beam losses. But if the magnets must be shorter, they must also be stronger to compensate. To obtain the necessary longitudinal space for the collimators, a solution based on an 11 T dipole as a replacement for the 8.33 T LHC main dipoles is being considered. In order to increase the magnetic field, the material of the conductor has to change. The superconductor used currently in the accelerator is niobium-titanium but It cannot withstand magnetic field intensity as high as the more expensive (and harder to use) niobium-tin . Niobium-tin is an extremely brittle and difficult-to-manage superconductor therefore the research on methods to withstand the large forces and large temperature changes it will be subjected to in accelerator magnets as they help bend and focus particle beams is ongoing. CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research, Geneva, Switzerland) and FNAL (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Chicago, USA) have started a joint program to demonstrate the feasibility of Nb3Sn technology for this purpose. Present FEAC staff, while working for CERN at the time, were responsible for these services:

Translation of APDL input files to CATIA & ANSYS Workbench files
Parametric CAD modeling, drafting & parameters documentation
APDL input files & macros
Setup of parametric, coupled multiphysics FE analysis
Design space exploration
Shape optimization of components & parameter values to achieve the required results
Comparison between test and FEM results
Procedure & results documentation
Knowledge transfer

The project is ongoing at CERN & Fermilab. Follow the links to learn more :