Long Length Welded NbTi CIC Superconducting Cable for Accelerator Applications
- Hyper Tech Research, Inc., Columbus, OH (United States)
- Texas A & M Univ., College Station, TX (United States)
The Jefferson Lab Electron-Ion Collider (JLEIC) proposed constructing a colliding beam facility to study the spin structure of nuclear matter in which highly polarized beams of ions and electrons would be collided at energies up to ~100 GeV/u for ions and 20 GeV for electrons. The arc lattice of the Ion Ring would require 256 4-m dipoles that would operate up to 3 T, with a dynamic aperture of ~10 cm x 6 cm. The Accelerator Research Lab (ARL) at Texas A&M University has developed a design for a superferric dipole that utilizes a round NbTi cable-in-conduit (CIC) conductor. Uniquely in the CIC windings the cryogenics are integrated within the cable itself so that it can operate stably in the highest radiation loads. The outer sheath integrates strong mechanical support at the cable level, so that coil ends can be formed economically and reproducibly, large Lorentz loads can be supported, and all cables of a winding can be precisely and reproducibly positioned. One of the unique benefits of the CIC conductor is a more cost-effective manufacture of superconducting magnets for particle accelerators and for a number of practical applications. ARL completed a Conceptual Design Report for the magnet and its conductor, and ARL built mockup windings and developed the fabrication tooling and methods. Each magnet would require ~300 m of CIC cable. As a result, CIC technology took on a new significance for the DOE’s EIC project. During the November 2016 DOE NP review of accelerator R&D for the EIC project, the committee asked the JLEIC team whether they had evaluated an option to double the dipole field strength in the Ion Ring, so as to enable the collider to reach the maximum ion energy ~200 GeV (protons) envisaged for the EIC mission. The ARL team also prepared a design for 6 T dipoles using a CIC cable similar to the one for the 3 T version, requiring 54 turns of cable compared to 24 for the 3 T version. Thus each of its upper and lower half-windings would require a total cable length of ~300 m, comparable to the length required for a full winding of the 3 T design. This Phase II project proposed to develop long-length cables for each of the two specifications, so that the cable would be ready for use in prototype windings for either dipole design. The design flexibility of the CIC conductor and ARL’s dipole design methodology exhibits itself in the fact that the projected cost for the 6 T design is only 2.25x that of the 3 T design, whereas a comparable aperture cos-θ dipole for 6 T would require two shells and have a projected cost ~4x that of a 3 T RHIC-like analog. Hyper Tech demonstrated in the Phase I and II a new method for continuously forming the metal sheath tube onto the ARL CIC conductor, without damaging the cable, and with a He-tight weld of the sheath. The Phase II demonstrated that arbitrarily long lengths of CIC cable can be manufactured in a continuous process for use in making the windings for superconducting magnets.
- Research Organization:
- Hyper Tech Research
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Nuclear Physics (NP)
- Contributing Organization:
- Texas A&M University
- DOE Contract Number:
- SC0015198
- OSTI ID:
- 1633886
- Type / Phase:
- STTR (Phase II)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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