Bending and buckling of superconducting partial toroidal field coils

Based on the theory of curved beams and the Biot–Savart law, a new theoretical model for magnetoelastic bending and buckling of superconducting toroidal field coils is developed and corroborated numerically. In contrast to the existing models, this model incorporates in-plane deformation of the coil. A semi-analytical approach is used to obtain the solution to the coupled problem. In order to validate the model and associated solution method, the experiment of Miya et al., 1982 is modeled. The theoretical predictions of the critical current of coils with none or one pin support are shown to be in excellent agreement with the published experimental data. It is also shown that the in-plane deformation has a significant influence on the critical current.