Nb3Sn Magnet Program with Flexible Pre-reacted Cable
The construction technique subdivides the coil into many sectors, each independently supported, and can therefore control the Lorentz forces in high field magnets. This technique has been used to build many successful helical magnets for RHIC.
The quench results showed that the coil operated near the short-sample limit of the conductor, 820 A. The field at the winding is ~2.5T. The high current and low field, a difficult combination for stability in a superconductor, would be more favorable in a full scale magnet.
A dipole coil using small-diameter, pre-reacted Nb3Sn cable has been built and tested successfully. This proof-of-principal result opens the door to a promising, new approach to building high field magnets.