Bending and buckling of superconducting partial toroidal field coils

Based on the theory of curved beams and the Biot-Savart law, a new theoreti cal model for magnetoelastic bending and buckling of superconducting toroid al field coils is developed and corroborated numerically. In contrast to th e existing models, this model incorporates in-plane deformation of the coil . A semi-analytical approach is used to obtain the solution to the coupled problem. In order to validate the model and associated solution method, the experiment of Miya et al. (1982) is modeled. The theoretical predictions o f the critical current of coils with none or one pin support are shown to b e in excellent agreement with the published experimental data. It is also s hown that the in-plane deformation has a significant influence on the criti cal current. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.