6.

Production of Magnetic Field

6.1 Introduction

• Thoughts of high magnetic field is as old as superconductivity itself. Kammerlingh

Onnes himself hoped that it might be possible to produce very large magnetic
field using superconductors economically.
• We have seen then, how long the way was and how much knowledge had to be
acquired before the dream of Kammerlingh Onnes could be realized.
• Superconducting magnet of every desired size and geometry have already been
manufactured.
• The application of superconducting magnet was for only the scientific research
such as in solid state physics and high energy physics until 1960s.
• Now they have applications in medical such as magnetic resonance imaging and
have been planned in controlled fusion, superconducting motors of several
kilowatts, energy storage facilities and in suspended trains.
6.2 Economic Consideration
• When a magnetic field is set up using a superconductor in principle, no further
electric power is required to maintain it. For this moment it is necessary at this
moment to cool the whole coil to liquid helium temperature and maintain the
temperature. Even a rough calculation reveals that for high fields B>10T (100 kG),
a superconducting magnet is economical.
• Copper coil of 4 cm diameter and 10 cm length solenoid would require a power
of 5000 kW to produce a field of 10T. To remove the head 1000 liters of water
has to be circulated per minute. In contrast the power required to maintain a
superconductor of same size would be considerably less.

80%
Cost (%)

Cu at 300K

40%

Nb-Ti at 4.2K

20 40
103 hrs
6.3 Stability Problem

• In order to make the construction of the coils as economical as possible efforts are made
to employ load currents that are as high as possible for the superconducting material. The
upper limit is given by the critical current of the particular materials.
• When attempt was made to construct superconducting coils, it was found that the level of
field was much less than the expected values. This phenomenon was known as
degradation effect. This problem was overcome by stabilized wires.
• It had been realized that the instabilities were as a result of flux jumps in the
superconducting material. We know that in Type-II superconductors between Hc1 and
Hc2, the material is in mixed state where some of the flux lines pass through the material.
These flux lines will be pinned in the respective site known as pinning centers and cannot
propagate easily into the superconducting region due to the force in the crystal called
pinning force. However due to some events such as temperature change or shocks, the
entire bundles of flux break away from the pinning centre and suddenly migrate through
the material under Lorentz force.
• The rapid motion of whole bundle of flux creates a great deal of heat. If this heat is not
removed immediately, the temperature would rise and the superconductor would turn in to
normal. The normal resistance would increase the heat further and the normal region
would expand further and ultimately the coil would get damaged.
• The stabilization is achieved by coating the superconductor with normal metal with as little
resistivity as possible example- copper or aluminium. Thus at the spot of flux jump, the
current passes through the normal conducting short circuit thus removing the heat
immediately. This helps the affected part to get further cooled and entering into
superconducting state.
• Thus the completely stabilized coil can be obtained by the above method.
• NbTi alloy is an important superconductor used in high magnetic field application because
of its Hc2 value close to 13T. NbTi wires are drawn by inserting thick NbTi conductor into
copper billet of suitable size and then drawing whole thing in wire form.
• Nb3Sn is found to be most successful superconductor with Hc2 values as high as 20T at
T=0K for magnetic field applications. This alloy also drawn in wire form in copper matrix
using the above technique.
• Multifilamentary conductors either from Nb3Sn or Nb-Ti are highly stable against flux jump.
Systematic studies have shown that tendency for flux jumps decreases with decreasing
diameter of superconducting filament. Thus bundle of thin superconducting wire is useful.
6.4 Coil Protection:
• Even when stabilized materials are employed and the coil is properly constructed, events
can occur such as gas leakage in to cryostat vacuum, which lead to evaporation of liquid
helium and the coil becoming a normal conductor. The magnetic field then collapses and
the whole of energy stored in magnetic field is converted into heat.
• This energy is considerable for large coil. A magnetic field of 50 kG in a volume of 1m3
contains a stored energy of 107 J. If this energy is transferred in to uncontrolled manner,
then the whole coil assembly will be destroyed.
• The coil can be protected with the following design of superconducting magnet.
• If the electrical resistance of the coil is large in the normal state, the current that is
produced will be small so that the destruction by Ohmic heating will be avoided. But in this
case, the collapse of magnetic field would lead to large voltages that can lead to electrical
break down between the windings of the coil.
• In such type of catastrophe the following type of devices can be Fig.1
used. The purpose of the protective device is to decouple the
energy from the coil as early as possible.
• In Fig.1, the magnet coil is connected to an external resistor of
large resistance R compared to internal resistance r of the coil.
In case of field collapse the switch would automatically connect
to the external resistor R.
• In this process considerable energy is converted to heat in the external resistor. The
advantage is that only a small amount of helium is lost by evaporation. The
disadvantage is that high voltage appear during field collapse due to large resistor R.
• As a result of high voltage, electrical breakdown can occur between the windings.
Hence coils that are protected by this method must be carefully insulated against
internal discharges.
• An improved version of this model is shown in Fig.2. Here the coil is split into several
region and each of which is connected to a particular resistor. This means that voltages
that occur also got divided.
Fig2
• In special cases, the energy can be decoupled by
inductive method. For this the coil must be surrounded
by a closed conductor having small self inductance.
During the decay of magnetic field, dominant energy
dissipation will be with the coupled conductor For the
better coupling the inductive coils must be kept within
the Helium bath. The disadvantage is that large
evaporation of liquid helium and the advantage is that no large induced voltage or
electric breakdown.
• The large forces developed at the coils for high Fig.3
magnetic fields pose important construction problem.
Frequently, this needs massive supporting structure, it
must be designed such that there are not exposed to
overcritical forces due to eddy currents or during the
breakdown of the magnetic field. s indicated in the
following figure.
• The magnetic pressure of the field B stored in the coil
is B2/2 o = p

• At 1T, this yields about 4 bar. At 20T, the pressure reaches 1.6 kbar, which is high
enough to practically deform the coil. Coil construction must withstand this force. Also
the forces acting on the winding of the coil radially outward is very strong for high
magnetic field. The supporting structure should not affect magnetic field.