Buckling behavior of a superconducting magnet coil

The buckling behavior of a superconducting magnet coil has been investigated for out of plane perturbations. It has been shown that such a coil becomes unstable due to its own magnetic field for out of plane bending at the operating values of electric currents. A technique devised by the author that computes the inductance change due to deformation, has been incorporated in this study. The evaluation shows that although the magnetic fields external to the coil are important and that there is additional structural stiffness provided by the surrounding structure, the effects of the self magnetic field should be evaluated and incorporated in the design of such coils. However, based on previous studies, both analytical and experimental, it has been established that the out-of-plane deformation is the most critical mode from a stability standpoint. Therefore, this mode has been exclusively addressed in this study. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.