Quench protection analysis integrated in the design of dipoles for the Future Circular Collider

Abstract

The EuroCirCol collaboration is designing a 16 T Nb_{3}Sn dipole that can be used as the main bending magnet in a 100 km long 100 TeV hadron-hadron collider. For economic reasons, the magnets need to be as compact as possible, requiring optimization of the cable cross section in different magnetic field regions. This leads to very high stored energy density and poses serious challenges for the magnet protection in case of a quench, i.e., sudden loss of superconductivity in the winding. The magnet design therefore must account for the limitations set by quench protection from the earliest stages of the design. In this paper we describe how the aspect of quench protection has been accounted for in the process of developing different options for the 16 T dipole designs. We discuss the assumed safe values for hot spot temperatures and voltages, and the efficiency of the protection system. We describe the developed tools for the quench analysis, and how their usage in the magnet design will eventually ensure a secure magnet operation.