Construction of the new prototype of main quadrupole cold masses for the arc short straight sections of LHC

Each cold mass of the short straight sections in the eight LHC arcs will contain a 3.25 m long twin aperture quadrupole of a nominal gradient of 223 T/m. This magnet will be aligned in a 5.3 m long inertia tube together with auxiliary magnets on each end. On the quadrupole connection end either a pair of 38 cm long octupole or trim quadrupole magnets will be mounted, on the other end there will be combined sextupole-dipole correctors with a yoke length of 1.26 m. The powering of the main quadrupoles will be assured by two pairs of copper stabilized superconducting bus-bars placed inside the cold mass next to the bus-bars for the main dipole magnets. Each of the two quadrupole apertures will be connected to its quench protection diode. The construction of three prototypes has been entrusted to the CEA/Saclay laboratory, in the frame of the special French contribution to the LHC project. The first cold mass prototype has been completed and warm-measured for its multipole content at CEA. The second cold mass is presently under completion. The paper reviews the experience with the development of the quadrupole coils and cold mass construction and gives the results of the first warm magnetic measurements. An outlook for the series manufacture of the 400 are quadrupole magnets and their cold masses for the LHC machine completes the report.