Optimizing Cooling Strategies for CORC Conductors in High-Field Fusion Applications

This work presents a comparative thermal–hydraulic analysis of a CORC (Conductor On Round Core) cable under two classes of external perturbation, fast (20 ms) and slow (1 s), with the goal of evaluating its stability against quench. Four configurations are modeled, each differing in helium flow topology: adiabatic, 1-channel, 2-channel, and 3-channel. The simulations include the effect of thermal contact resistance and friction factor uncertainty in the tape bundle. Results show that under fast perturbations, helium's contribution to stability is limited unless it is in direct contact with the superconducting tapes, while for slow perturbations, helium cooling plays a dominant stabilizing role. Since stability must be achieved across the temperature range from ∼ 4.5 K to 20 K, helium emerges as a key actor in any cooling strategy designed for these conditions. The addition of a relief channel in the 3-channel configuration effectively reduces pressure buildup during fast transients with minimal stability penalty and further enhances performance under slow perturbations.