Superconducting magnets: the engineers' challenge

CLRC's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory has a long history of expertise in superconducting magnet design. The engineering challenges of building these magnets are many and varied. They include not only mechanical and materials engineering but also cryogenics, vacuum technology and electrical engineering, all of which must be carried out to exacting standards. Engineers at RAL are now applying their many areas of expertise to the design of some of the world's biggest superconducting magnets - a pair of end cap toroids for the ATLAS detector for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. (author)