Quench Simulation in an Integrated Design Environment for Superconducting Magnets

The electrical integrity of superconducting magnets that go through a resistive transition (quench) is an important consideration in magnet design. Numerical quench simulation leads to a coupled thermodynamic and electromagnetic problem, due to the mutual dependence of material parameters. While many tools treat the electromagnetic field problem and the thermodynamic one independently, more recent developments adopt a strongly coupled approach in a 3-D finite-element environment. We introduce a computationally efficient weak electromagnetic-thermodynamic coupling within an integrated design environment for superconducting magnets.