Engineering design of superconducting magnets for a torsatron experiment

The design of superconducting magnets for a torsatron plasma confinement experiment are presented. A torsatron is a variation of a stellarator which requires half the helical windings and no toroidal field coil. Both the toroidal and poloidal fields are produced by a single set of helical winding. Due to the particular distribution of magnetic forces in the helical windings, the design of a torsatron configuration requires special consideration. In this paper, we present the force distribution on the helical coils. For the special case of uniformly distributed winding, magnetic forces and energy are calculated directly from formula for the inductance of toroids and dipoles. Significant reduction in the standard requirement can be achieved if the winding angle can be set at a particular value.