Manufacture and Test of a Small Ceramic-Insulated Nb$_{3}$Sn Split Solenoid

A small split solenoid wound with high-Jc Nb$_{3}$Sn conductor, constituted by a 0.8 mm Rod Re-stack Process (RRP®) strand, was built and tested at CERN in order to study the applicability of: 1) ceramic wet glass braid insulation without epoxy impregnation of the magnet; 2) a new heat treatment devised at CERN and particularly suitable for reacting RRP® Nb$_{3}$Sn strands. This paper briefly describes the solenoid and the experimental results obtained during 4.4 K and 1.9 K tests. The split solenoid consists of two coils (25 mm inner diameter, 51.1 mm outer diameter, 12.9 mm height). The coils were initially separately tested, in an iron mirror configuration, and then tested together in split solenoid configuration. In all the tests at 4.4 K the coils reached a current higher than 95 % of their short sample limits at the first quench; in split solenoid configuration the maximum field values in the coils and in the aperture were respectively 10.7 T and 12.5 T. At 1.9 K the coils had premature quenches due to self field instability despite the rather high RRR of the two coils (190 and 270). This phenomenon at 1.9 K, predicted by our theory [1], was confirmed by strand measurements.