A 25 kA, 2T, 78 kJ, 52 litre superconducting test coil. Strength calculations and construction

Within the scope of our research program for a 25 kA superconducting rectifier, we have built a 25 kA s.c. coil being a single layer solenoid with a bore of 0.45 meter and a volume of 52 litre. The starting point for the design was to avoid any metallic structural material. This unique coil consists of 26 turns of a Rutherford cable in one layer covered at the outside with 6 millimeter glassfibre reinforced epoxy, in order to lower the azimuthal and axial stresses in the conductor to acceptable values. The coil has been vacuum impregnated with a glassfilling factor of 0.529. The paper describes the strength calculations and the construction details. A theoretical analysis of the mechanical behaviour of the glassfibre-epoxy-conductor lamination is given.