FFT-Based Approach for the Mechanical Analysis of Superconducting Rutherford-Type Cables

Low-temperature superconductors are widely used in high field accelerator magnets, mostly within Rutherford type cables. We have proposed the “CoCaSCOPE” approach in order to build a numerical model of impregnated low-temperature Nb ₃ Sn superconducting Rutherford-type cables dedicated to mechanical computation. Here the strand structure is described as a bi-metallic material: a copper core, a superconducting bundle region and an outer copper ring. In this paper, we explore the use of the distributed solver AMITEX_FFTP based on Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). The main interest of this method is to reduce the simulation time. This approach is investigated for structures with linear material behavior in this paper. This work compares the results from the FFT approach (using AMITEX) and from the 3D Finite Elements approach (using Cast3M). In this way, we can demonstrate the higher performances of FFT-based solving method compared to the finite elements method for multi-scale structure such as Rutherford-type cables in terms of computation time. With this approach, we can reduce the computation time or, alternatively, increase the size of our models in order to analyze the behavior of a macroscale model under mechanical solicitation.