Numerical simulation of quench propagation at early phase by high-order methods

In this paper a high-order discontinuous Galerkin (DG) spectral element method (SEM) is introduced to deal with thermo-hydraulic quench simulation in superconducting magnets, specifically in the case of cable-in-conduit conductors (CICC). We will focus on 1D quench propagation at early phase which is important to understand the mechanism of quench propagation and protect the superconducting magnets. A second-order polynomial interpolation to the helium heat capacity is introduced in this study, and boundary conditions are imposed along the characteristics to overcome the typical difficulties encountered in numerical studies. Explicit fourth order Runge–Kutta time integration is used to match the high accuracy in space. Numerical results demonstrate the advantages in accuracy of this method when used to simulate early quench development.