Unsteady heat dissipation in accelerator superconducting coils insulated with porous ceramic insulation in normal and supercritical helium conditions

To investigate the unsteady heat dissipation in accelerator superconducting coils insulated with porous ceramic insulation, two experimental mock-ups reproducing the thermal and the mechanical conditions of a superconducting coils were produced. The mock-ups with compressive load of 10 MPa and 20 MPa were tested at normal (T = 4.23 K and p = 1 bar) and supercritical helium conditions (T = 4.23 K and p = 2.0 to 3.75 bar) during unsteady heat dissipation. The paper presents the experimental results of temperature rise in both superconducting coils as a function of time for a wide range of a localized heat load varying from 0.1 kJ/m3 up to 12.8 MJ m−3 per pulse. A numerical model of the transient process in these coils has been developed and the computations are compared with the experimental results.