Liquid Nitrogen Tests of a Torus Coil for the Jefferson Lab 12-GeV Accelerator Upgrade

A magnet system consisting of six superconducting trapezoidal racetrack-type coils is being built for the Jefferson Lab 12-GeV accelerator upgrade project. The magnet coils are wound with Superconducting Super Collider-36 NbTi strand Rutherford cable soldered into a copper channel. Each superconducting toroidal coil is force cooled by liquid helium, which circulates in a tube that is in good thermal contact with the inside of the coil. Thin copper sheets are soldered to the helium cooling tube and enclose the superconducting coil, providing cooling to the rest of the coil pack. As part of a rigorous risk mitigation exercise, each of the six coils is cooled with liquid nitrogen (LN2) to 80 K to validate predicted thermal stresses, verify the robustness and integrity of electrical insulation, and evaluate the efficacy of the employed conduction cooling method. This paper describes the test setup, the tests performed, and the findings.