Geometrical Behavior of Nb$_{3}$Sn Rutherford Cables During Heat Treatment

In Nb$_{3}$Sn accelerator magnets, non-superconducting precursor cables are wound into their final coil shape and then heat treated at a high temperature to form the A15 superconducting phase. The growth of cable strands during reaction and the differential thermal dilatation in the coil components lead to both stress in the cable and geometrical deformations of the winding, with possible consequences on magnet performances. An experimental campaign on different types of Rutherford cables has been carried out at CEA Saclay, in collaboration with CERN, in order to measure cable dimension changes in all directions, with respect to cable configuration and winding geometry. A 700-mm-long versatile test bench has been designed for several cable topologies up to 22 mm in width. This paper describes the tooling and presents the results of the experimental campaign led on the cables, made of powder-in-tube and restacked-rod-process strands, of FRESCA2, a 13-T dipole magnet