Transient stability of LHC strands

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) machine will operate at 1.9K in order to ac hieve the high bending fields required in the dipole magnets, The cable and coil matrix is designed to be 'porous' in order to allow the Hen: coolant to penetrate within the cable for stability enhancement. This paper describ es transient stability measurements and theoretical modelling carried out o n single strands from the LHC cable. The experimental work has been carried out at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory under an agreement with CERN. Th e aim of the experimental work has been to measure the influence of the str and surface treatment on the quench energy. The surface treatment, oxidized copper, tin-silver, nickel etc, determines the transient heat transfer coe fficients to the HeII under high heat flux, short timescale (approximately 20 microseconds) conditions, The test equipment, based on an inductive heat ing technique, is described and quench energy measurements presented. The e xperimental results are compared with theoretical models developed at CERN and RAL in order to derive the heat transfer coefficients.