A circuit theory approach to quantifying thermal performance of cryostat designs for SSC dipole magnets

Design of cryogenic cooling systems for superconducting magnets requires a priori knowledge of the total heat transferred from ambient to the cold mass as well as to its surrounding thermal shields. To estimate this net parasitic heat leak through the cryostat of the Collider Dipole Magnet (CDM) an equivalent thermal circuit representation of the CDM cryostat is developed to numerically simulate the multimode, spatially-averaged heat flow occurring after thermal equilibrium is established. In this paper, the formulation of the proposed circuit model is summarized. The model was implemented in a computer program which was run to compute representative values for the net steady-state heat flow expected to occur within a CDM cryostat. A breakdown of this heat leak on a component basis is provided in tabular form. The effects of inner shield temperature and pressure are simulated and the results of these simulations are plotted