Quench protection tests of a cryocooler cooled 6 T NbTi superconducting magnet by an active power method

Abstract When a quench occurs in a superconducting magnet, excessive joule heating may damage the magnet. We have presented the quench protection system based on an active power method. Our previous quench protection tests have been carried out for small superconducting magnets whose self inductances are less than several hundred mH to verify principles of our proposed system. In this paper, we present experimental results of quench protection tests of a cryocooler cooled 6 T NbTi superconducting magnet (self inductance 15.5 H), which is a commercial size magnet made by Tamakawa Co., Ltd. We confirmed that our proposed system could inhibit the maximum temperature of the superconducting magnet (initial temperature 4.3 K) after the quench to less than about 44 K at operation magnetic field 5.5 T. Experimental results suggest that our proposed system is useful for practical used superconducting magnets.