The Development of 100 kA Current Leads for a Superconducting Transmission Line Magnet

Author

Huang, Yuenian ; Foster, G. William ; Kim, Seog-Whan ; Mazur, Peter O. ; Oleck, Andrew ; Piekarz, Henryk ; Rabehl, Roger ; Wake, Masayoshi

Author_Institution

Fermi Nat. Accel. Lab.

Volume

16

Issue

2

fYear

2006

fDate

6/1/2006 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

457

Lastpage

460

Abstract

A pair of current leads to power a transmission line magnet cooled at liquid helium temperature has been designed and developed at Fermilab. The leads were designed to carry 100 kA dc current. Each lead consists of a warm end, a heat exchanger section and a cold end. The warm end is a half moon shaped plate brazed to cylinder. The heat exchanger section is made of 202 copper rods arranged in a staggered pattern. Each rod is 6.35 mm in diameter and 1650 mm in length. The rods were soft-soldered into 12.7 mm deep holes at both warm and cold ends. The helium gas flow, guided by anodized aluminum baffles along the lead length, allows for a relatively high heat transfer coefficient between the current carrying rods and cooling helium gas. The current leads were successfully tested with a ramping current of up to 104 kA. The current lead design, assembly work and the test results are presented

Keywords

aluminium; cooling; copper; heat exchangers; heat transfer; power supplies to apparatus; rods (structures); soldering; superconducting magnets; superconducting transmission lines; 100 kA; Fermilab; anodized aluminum baffle; cooling; copper rods; current lead design; heat exchanger; heat transfer coefficient; helium gas flow; liquid helium temperature; soft-soldering; superconducting transmission line magnet; Aluminum; Copper; Fluid flow; Helium; Moon; Power transmission lines; Superconducting magnets; Superconducting transmission lines; Temperature; Testing; Current leads; heat transfer; power supply; transmission line magnet;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Applied Superconductivity, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1051-8223

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TASC.2005.869627

Filename

1642886