Plug Coil Maintenance

The high-field plug coils are monitored and serviced with attention to superconducting integrity, cooling, and quench protection.

The plug coils (26.49 T class) are the highest-stress magnets in Aegis. Their maintenance focuses on the superconducting winding integrity, the current leads and joints, the cooling circuits, and the quench-detection and protection systems that guard them. Most of this work is condition-based, driven by monitoring rather than routine disassembly.

What is monitored

• Coil temperature margin and cooling flow
• Joint and current-lead performance
• Quench-detection channel health
• Structural instrumentation for mechanical load

Servicing constraints

Serving a superconducting coil deeply usually requires warming it up, which is a major outage. Design therefore aims to make the plug coils long-lived and to keep serviceable elements — leads, instrumentation, cooling connections — accessible without disturbing the winding. Alignment must be preserved through any warm-up and cool-down cycle.

Protection first

Before any high-current operation after maintenance, quench detection and the fast-discharge path are re-verified. The plug coils' stored energy makes protection integrity non-negotiable. Plug-coil maintenance is engineered at design stage against the frozen 26.49 T configuration; the coils are simulated, not yet built.