Critical Current Measurements of the Main LHC Superconducting Cables

Abstract

For the main dipole and quadrupole magnets of the LHC, CERN has ordered from industry about 7000 km of superconducting Nb-Ti Rutherford type cables, delivered between 1999 and 2005. The strands of these cables are produced by six different companies, and cabled on live different machines. In the framework of the US contribution to the LHC, BNL has been testing and analyzing the electrical properties of samples of these cables. The main purpose of these tests was to qualify the critical current of the entire cable production in the frame of the quality assurance program implemented by CERN to assure the overall strand and cable performances. In total more than 2100 cable samples have been evaluated at 4.3 K in terms of critical current I <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">C</sub> , n-value and the residual resistance ratio, RRR. This paper will present an overview of the results, and show the correlations of the critical current and n-value between virgin strands, extracted strands, and cables. Also described are correlations of I <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">C</sub> measured at BNL and those made at the FRESCA facility in CERN. Furthermore a few trends and anomalies of the cable production that were detected from testing cables are highlighted.