Very short cycle loss measurement by microcomputer

The improvement of loss theory in superconducting magnets requires measurements during very short cycles. Moreover, immediate computation and storage of results and graphic display possibilities, are powerful advantages for the experimenter. A special high rate multichannel acquisition system has been developed in our laboratory for this purpose, built-in to a low cost microcomputer based on the S.100 bus. The multichannel acquisition system is divided into two boards : an analog board which contains one to four fast A D C (one per channel) and a digital board, containing the memory which is directly accessible through the processor. It is fully programmable : one to four channels, 8 K bytes in selected configuration, logging speed up to 4 microseconds and measurement number. Thus, losses during a 1 msec. cycle can be measured with a good accuracy. In addition, because of its flexibility, this system can be used to study other transient phenomena such as quenches or stability measurements.