Structural design of the superconducting poloidal field coils for the Tokamak Physics Experiment

The Tokamak Physics Experiment concept design uses superconducting coils made from cable-in-conduit conductor to accomplish both magnetic confinement and plasma initiation. The Poloidal Field (PF) magnet system is divided into two subsystems, the central solenoid and the outer ring coils, the latter is focus of this paper. The eddy current heating from the pulsed operation is excessive for a case type construction; therefore, a “no case” design has been chosen. This “no case” design uses the conductor conduit as the primary structure and the electrical insulation (fiberglass/epoxy wrap) as a structural adhesive. The model integrates electromagnetic analysis and structural analysis into the finite element code ANSYS to solve the problem. PF coil design is assessed by considering a variety of coil current wave forms, corresponding to various operating modes and conditions. The structural analysis shows that the outer ring coils are within the requirements of the fatigue life and fatigue crack growth requirements. The forces produced by the Toroidal Field coils on the PF coils have little effect on the maximum stresses in the PF coils. In addition in an effort to reduce the cost of the coils a new elongated PF coil design was proposed which changes the aspect ratio of the outer ring coils to reduce the number of turns in the coils. The compressive stress in the outer ring coils is increased while the tensile stress is decreased