• S. Caspi, P. Ferracin
  LBNL, Berkeley, California

Pushing accelerator magnets beyond 10T holds a promise of future upgrades to machines like the Tevatron at FermiLab and the LHC at CERN. Exhausting the current density limits of NbTi, superconductor, Nb3Sn is at the present time the only practical superconductor capable of generating fields beyond 10T. Several Nb3Sn pilot magnets, with fields as high as 16T, have been built and tested, paving the way for future attempts at fields approaching 20T. The combination of high current density and the required high magnetic fields has resulted in reduced conductor volume and significantly increased the accumulated Lorentz forces. Future coil and structure designs will be required to deal with stresses of several 100’s of MPa and forces of 10’s of MN/m. The combined engineering requirements on size and cost of accelerator magnets will require a magnet technology that diverges from the one currently used with NbTi conductor. How far can the engineering of high field magnets be pushed, what are the issues and limitations, and what tools will we need before such magnets can be used in particle accelerators. In this paper we shall address such issues and attempt to provide possible answers.