Support of SULTAN sample modeling

This project is a 24 months research Project, funded in the frame of the international research project ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, total funding 92 kEuros). The Project, coordinated by Dr. M. Breschi, involves Prof. Pier Luigi Ribani and several undergraduate and graduate students from the Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica of the University of Bologna, Prof. Fabrizio Bellina and his research group from the Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica, Gestionale e Meccanica of the University of Udine and Prof. Roberto Zanino and his research group from the Dipartimento di Energetica of the Torino Polytechnics. The Project is aimed to support the development of the experimental setup and the analysis of the results of several tests of superconducting cables for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. These tests are analyzed by means of a coupled electromagnetic-thermal-hydraulic numerical code (THELMA) , describing the complex phenomena occurring in the tests of superconducting cables cooled by supercritical helium in forced convection. The electromagnetic analysis is focused at the computation of the current distribution and ac losses inside the multi-strand cables during the tests, and at the comparison of different joint technologies between cables. The thermal-hydraulic analysis is mainly devoted to the understanding of the impact of non uniform temperature distributions in the cable cross section on the measurement of current sharing temperature and to the investigation of several phenomena correlated to the non uniform mass flow rate of helium in the cable cross section.