The Toroidal Field Coil Design for ARIES-ST
Authors: W. Reiersen, F. Dahlgren, H-M. Fan, C. Neumeyer, and I. Zatz
Date of PPPL Report: January 2000
Presented at: The 18th IEEE/NPSS (Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers/Nuclear and Plasma Science Society) Symposium on Fusion Engineering (SOFE) which was held in Albuquerque, NM, on October 25-29, 1999.
An evolutionary process was used to develop the toroidal field (TF) coil design for the ARIES-ST (Spherical Tokamak). Design considerations included fabricability, assembly, maintenance, energy efficiency, and structural robustness. The design addresses a number of the concerns (complexity) and criticisms (high cost, high recirculating power) of fusion. It does this by: 1) Applying advanced, but available laser forming and spray casting techniques for manufacturing the TF coil system; 2) Adopting a simple single toroidal field coil system to make assembly and maintenance much easier. The single turn design avoids the necessity of using the insulation as a structural component of the TF coils, and hence is much more robust than multi-turn designs. 3) Using a high conductivity copper alloy and modest current densities to keep the recirculating power modest.