The CIRCE Code: Cast3M Investigation and Research for Coils Mechanical Evaluation

The recent success of demonstration coils using HTS confirms the promising application of these materials for toroidal field (TF) coils in high-field fusion machines. Potential magnetic fields at around 20 T on the conductor claim to achieve the required performance for commercial reactors with fusion power scaling as <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">${{P}_f} \propto B_t^4$</tex-math></inline-formula> under several assumptions. However, this usually involves increased engineering challenges to withstand much higher mechanical loads scaling quadratically with the magnetic field. This paper presents a new mechanical toolbox, named CIRCE: a highly configurable code featuring plane stress analysis and 3D beam analysis, with a case study of tokamak TF coils under in-plane and out-of-plane loads.