Commissioning of the Main Coil of the EDIPO Test Facility

The EDIPO test facility is erected at CRPP Villigen with the aim of providing a flexible, high field test bed for high current force flow superconductors. The EDIPO main coil is a tilted-head race-track pair wound by a graded Nb3Sn cable-in-conduit conductor. The whole project, partly funded by the European Commission, started in 2004 and entered the commissioning phase in 2013. The final steps of instrumentation and installation of the main coil, delivered by industry in May 2011, lasted about 18 months. The first cool-down of the facility started in November 2012. The commissioning of the main coil, including the precise measurement of the generated magnetic field, was carried out in March 2013. At an operating current of 17.2 kA, a +/- 1% homogenous field of 12.35 T was generated over a length of 900 mm in the center of the test well, 140 mm x 91 mm in cross section. Details about cool-down, flux jumps, forces and displacements, field map, and charging rate are presented in this paper.