Pressure drop characteristic in a cable-in-conduit conductor

A cable-in-conduit conductor (CICC) is the best candidate to satisfy requirement for a superconducting magnet to be employed in a fusion machine, such as a large operating current, high magnetic field, high breakdown voltage and so on. The present drop of the conductor is a key factor in design of a cryogenic pump to be used in a magnet system in the fusion machine. Also, pressure rise at a coil quench depends on the pressure drop characteristic of the conductor. Several workers investigated the pressure drop characteristic of CICCs. Katheder attempted to derive general correlation of the pressure drop characteristic basis on the correlation used for pebble beds. He compared his correlation with the measurements for the eight different CICCs. However, there is a large error of 75% in the maximum. It seems general formula of the pressure drop characteristic of CICC has not been provided. The authors investigate the pressure drop characteristic of 30 kA, 80 m cooling path length CICCs, whose dimension is almost same as the conductor to be employed in the fusion machine. The result indicates correlation between the Reynolds number and the friction factor of CICCs obeys the conventional formula for a smooth tube, Hagen-Poesuilli formula, in laminar flow region but does not agree with the conventional formula for a smooth tube, Blasius formula, in turbulent flow region. The experimental result is compared with Katheder's correlation. Katheder's correlation does not show good agreement with the experimental result in the turbulent flow region. The correlation that the friction factor is inversely proportional to 0.157 power of the Reynolds number and the proportional constant is 0.257 coincides better with the experimental result in this region. (author)