Quench, thermal, and magnetic analysis computer code for superconducting solenoids

An update report on the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (NHMFL) magnet analysis code is presented. Among the recent improvements to the code is the ability to address complex conductors, windings and reinforcements in terms of thermal and magnetic diffusion. In this article we present several examples showing the capabilities of this code. For example copper/stainless steel, Cu/SS wires that are used in pulse magnets as an alternative to other conductors such as CuAg or CuNb have shown to have excellent thermal and mechanical properties. It was found that the rule of mixtures holds in predicting their properties. As a result it is expected that wires that have 10%Cu and 90%SS will essentially keep the SS high modulus and strength. However the 10% copper will improve the conductivity of this reinforcement that it can act as quench-back circuit in case of a quench. In this study we simulated a quench of a high field (20 T) magnet system and varied the Cu/SS ratio. The modeling results show that 5%Cu is enough to make the reinforcement act as quench-back circuit.