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Title: Conductor Specification and Validation for High-Luminosity LHC Quadrupole Magnets

Journal Article · · IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity

© 2017 IEEE. The high-luminosity upgrade of the large hadron collider (HL-LHC) at CERN will replace the main ring inner triplet quadrupoles, identified by the acronym MQXF, adjacent to the main ring intersection regions. For the past decade, the U.S. LHC Accelerator R&D Program, LARP, has been evaluating conductors for the MQXFA prototypes, which are the outer magnets of the triplet. Recently, the requirements for MQXF magnets and cables have been published in [P. Ferracin et al., IEEE Trans. Appl. Supercond., vol. 26, no. 4, Jun. 2016, Art. no. 4000207], along with the final specification for Ti-alloyed Nb3Sn conductor determined jointly by CERN and LARP. This paper describes the rationale beneath the 0.85-mm-diameter strand's chief parameters, which are 108 or more subelements, a copper fraction not less than 52.4%, strand critical current at 4.22 K not less than 631 A at 12 T and 331 A at 15 T, and residual resistance ratio of not less than 150. This paper also compares the performance for ~100 km production lots of the five most recent LARP conductors to the first 163 km of strand made according to theHL-LHCspecification.Two factors emerge as significant for optimizing performance and minimizing risk: a modest increase of the subelement diameter from 50 to 55 μm, and a Nb:Sn molar ratio of 3.6 instead of 3.4. The statistics acquired so far give confidence that the present conductor can balance competing demands in production for the HL-LHC project.

Research Organization:
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)
Contributing Organization:
LARP
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-07CH11359; AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1340492
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1340481; OSTI ID: 1580090
Report Number(s):
FERMILAB-CONF-16-344-TD; 1510202; TRN: US1700515
Journal Information:
IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity, Vol. 27, Issue 4; ISSN 1051-8223
Publisher:
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 28 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (7)

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More time for Nb 3 Sn magnet conductors journal September 2018
Implications of the strain irreversibility cliff on the fabrication of particle-accelerator magnets made of restacked-rod-process Nb3Sn wires journal April 2019
Ternary Nb 3 Sn superconductors with artificial pinning centers and high upper critical fields journal January 2019
Dipole Magnets Above 20 Tesla: Research Needs for a Path via High-Temperature Superconducting REBCO Conductors journal November 2019
Precipitous change of the irreversible strain limit with heat-treatment temperature in Nb3Sn wires made by the restacked-rod process journal August 2018