First tests of the westinghouse coil in the international fusion superconducting magnet test facility (IFSMTF)

The Westinghouse coil is one of the three forced-flow coils in the six-coil toroidal array at the IFSMTF at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It is wound with a 17-KA, Nb3Sn/Cu, cable-in-conduit superconductor supported structurally by aluminum plates and cooled by 4-K, 15-atm supercritical helium. The coil is instrumented to permit measurement of helium temperature, pressure, and flow rate; structure temperature, strain, and displacement; field; and normal zone voltage. A resistive heater has been installed to simulate nuclear heating, and inductive heaters have been installed to facilitate stability testing. The coil became superconducting on February 13, 1986, and has been tested as a single coil. The tests covered charging to design current and current-sharing tests using the resistive heater. Future tests will include operation in the full six-coil array, stability tests using pulsed inductive heaters, exposure to a pulsed magnetic field, extended operation above 100% of design current, and extended operation at design current at temperatures above 4.2 K.