STRUCTURAL DESIGN AND THERMAL ANALYSIS FOR THERMAL SHIELDS OF THE MICE COUPLING MAGNETS

A superconducting coupling magnet made from copper matrix NbTi conductors operating at 4 K will be used in the Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE) to produce up to 2.6 T on the magnet centerline to keep the muon beam within the thin RF cavity windows. The coupling magnet is to be cooled by two cryocoolers with a total cooling capacity of 3 W at 4.2 K. In order to keep a certain operating temperature margin, the most important is to reduce the heat leakage imposed on cold surfaces of coil cold mass assembly. An intermediate temperature shield system placed between the coupling coil and warm vacuum chamber is adopted. The shield system consists of upper neck shield, main shields, flexible connections and eight supports, which is to be cooled by the first stage cold heads of two cryocoolers with cooling capacity of 55 W at 60 K each. The maximum temperature difference on the shields should be less than 20 K, so the thermal analyses for the shields with different thicknesses, materials, flexible connections for shields' cooling and structure design for their supports were carried out. 1100 Al is finally adopted and the maximum temperature difference is around 15 K with 4 mm shield thickness. The paper is to present detailed analyses on the shield system design.