Design status of the NET toroidal coils

The Toroidal Field Coil System consists of 16 superconducting coil windings, their coil casings and the intercoil structure. All of these components are located inside a common cryostat vessel and will therefore be at a temperature of about 4.50 degK during operation of the machine. The 16 coils are arranged in a toroidal configuration in order to provide a magnetic field for the confinement of the ring shaped plasma. The inner legs of the D-shaped coils form a vault which is subjected to the centering forces that are caused by the toroidal field itself. The interaction between the poloidal field and the toroidal currents creates Lorentz Forces which are perpendicular to the TF coil plane. Intercoil structure and vault have to resist these forces. The huge size of the coils in combination with the fact that an A15 conductor material has to be used require techniques that are somewhat beyond the present state of the art. Therefore, a conductor and magnet development program has been launched. The development studies carried out by Associated Laboratories in cooperation with NET Team have resulted in several flow cooled composite conductors. Futheron, full size conductor samples were manufactured and two subsize conductors were manufactured and wound into two 12 T model coils. Proposals for the manufacture of the coil winding, the power supply and quench protection system, the cooling system and the instrumentation have been worked out in the course of these studies. To ensure the feasibility of the cois two study contracts have been placed with industry. This report will stress the most difficult aspects of the coil manufacture, the assembly of the winding in its steel casing and the assembly of the 16 coils with the intercoil structure to a toroidal configuration. The results of the thermomechanical and electromagnetic analysis (e.g. eddy currents in coils case, stress, a.c. losses) - will be reported and their impact on the design of the TF system will be explained. (author). 14 refs.; 10 figs