Quench simulation for 16T dipole built at Texas A&M University

A 16 Tesla Nb₃Sn block-coil dual dipole and its prototype are being developed at Texas A&M University. A quench protection system for the magnet is, of course, one of our concerns. Although there is a number of quench codes reported in literature. most of them are written to model a specific magnet. To our knowledge, the only commercially available quench codes are OPUS and QUABER. In OPUS the magnetic field calculations and the quench simulator are incorporated in one finite element package. The local magnetic fields and inductive couplings of the coils are accurately recalculated during the quench. However, being otherwise very general and robust OPUS deals only with the solenoidal magnets. QUABER has only been used at CERN and we have not yet had an opportunity to evaluate it. Therefore to facilitate the design of quench protection we have developed a new code for a magnet of general geometry with an arbitrary number of coils and with the provision for heaters and switches