Deformations and displacements of the LHC superconducting dipoles induced by standard and nonstandard operational modes

A full-scale and fully-instrumented working model of the LHC lattice cell has been tested at CERN between March and December 2002. Aside of the current, pressure and temperature sensors controlled by an industrial supervision system, a novel device has been set to monitor magnet positions with respect to the surrounding cryostat. The series of operating modes to test cryogenics, current leads and quench recovery electronics offered the chance to investigate potentially harmful deformations of the superconducting structure. In this paper, we present a survey of displacements and deformations experienced by the LHC cell magnets during thermal cycles, current ramps and resistive transitions. Although the system complexity prevented from complete modeling, a preliminary phenomena explanation is given.