Global test of the conductor for "Tore Supra" under actual working conditions

In a plasma current disruption event, the superconducting winding of the toroidal coils of a Tokomak must suffer very severe conditions of magnetic field variations without loosing superconductivity. An experimental set up has been built to simulate conditions which would eventually occur in "Tore Supra" and study the behaviour of the designed conductor. A sample of this conductor is subjected simultaneously to a DC transverse magnetic field up to 9.5 T, a transport current up to 2200 A and two pulsed field components: one parallel to the conductor length, up to 1 T and one perpendicular, up to 0.35 T. The time constant of these pulsed field components is adjustable from 8 to 150 ms. They can be applied independently or simultaneously. The experimental arrangement is able to provide quantitative limits for safe operations of "Tore Supra". Results show how good is the choice made for the conductor associated with the 1.8 K helium II cooling at atmospheric pressure.