TRANSIENT PRESSURE INCREASE IN CABLE-IN-CONDUIT CONDUCTOR EXPOSED TO PULSED MAGNETIC-FIELDS

A superconducting cable-in-conduit conductor, developed for poloidal field application, was tested with respect to its stability behavior in rapidly changing magnetic fields. In the stability experiments the conductor was exposed to half-cycle sinusoidal field pulses a few milliseconds in length, and the pressure increase in the cooling channel was measured during and after the field pulse with a high time resolution. A computer program was developed for numerical modelling of the helium transient hydrodynamics in the cable. A one-dimensional model taking into account the effect of thermal non-equilibrium in the cooling channel cross-section was used for computation. Measured pressure oscillations in the cable sample are well reproduced by the calculation. The developed model is proposed for prediction of pressure and flow velocity fields in internally cooled cables during transient heat generation.