Design,Development and Testing of Nb-Ti Superconducting Magnet & Creation of Liquid Helium Test Facility

Abstract

Research in the area of advanced materials for various applications is the demand of time. Discovery of nano technology, high Tc superconductivity and multi functional materials are just few of them. For proper understanding of the underlying physics, Low temperature investigations on these materials are very much needed. If magnetic field is added to low temperature,sometimes new insights are witnessed e.g., superconductivity, quantum Hall effect etc. Intense efforts are going on around the world to make simple and inexpensive superconducting magnet systems for performing variable temperature experiments on the above materials under high magnetic fields. Keeping in view of these facts, a lab scale mobile superconducting magnet
system is designed and developed in house using Nb- Ti wire (0.43 mm nominal diameter, Cu:SC Ratio of 2:1) and tested for production of 6 Tesla field and repeated quenching of the coil. The thesis describes the step-by-step procedure involved in winding and testing of the superconducting magnet. Further, a simple commercially available Liquid Helium transport dewar is suitably modified for magnet insertion with necessary instrumentation for liquid helium
transfer port, hall field-probe, LHe level indicator, temperature and field sensors, power supply and vapor cooled current leads etc. The magnet is tested in a commercially available cryostat, available at VECC Kolkata.
In a parallel effort, the present thesis also describes the setting up of Liquid Helium production and magnet testing facility along with necessary vacuum and electrical instrumentation. The out come of the present thesis is expected to accelerate the growth of Cryogenic/Vacuum/Applied Superconductivity research at NIT Rourkela.