Thermal analysis and testing for DIII-D ohmic heating coil repair

The DIII-D ohmic heating (OH) coil solenoid consists of two parallel windings of 48 turns each cooled by water. Each winding is made up of four parallel conductors. Desired thermal capacity of the coil is 20 MJ at a repetition rate of 10 min. One of the conductors started leaking water in July 1995. Since then, the coil has been operated at a reduced thermal load using one winding. An experiment followed by an analysis was undertaken to determine if the OH-coil could be operated at full capacity without cooling the leaking segment by relying on conduction heat transfer to the neighboring cooled conductors. The analysis took into consideration the transient energy equations, including the effect of conduction between neighboring conductors. The axial conduction was modeled in the conductor, but was ignored in the coolant. An experiment was performed on the undamaged coil winding to determine the thermal conductance between neighboring conductors. The experiment consisted of passing hot water through adjacent cooling channels of two conductors and cold water through the cooling channels of the remaining two conductors of the same winding. The flow rate, inlet and outlet temperatures from each circuit were measured during the transient. From the experimental data and analysis, an average thermal conductance between the conductors was determined to be about 0.1 W/cm ²-C. Using the experimentally determined value of the thermal conductance, an analysis was performed on a coil winding consisting of one uncooled conductor and three cooled conductors. Results show that it is possible to operate the full OH-coil without cooling the damaged conductor to the desired thermal load of 20 MJ per pulse