Multi-contact behaviors among Nb3Sn strands associated with load cycles in a CS1 cable cross section

•This paper presents the contact mechanical characteristics in the cable cross section.•Transverse compression stresses that affect cable performance are performed.•The effect of adjacent number on the stress distribution are also presented.

Cable-in-conduit conductors (CICC) are an essential part of the superconducting magnets for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). The cable performance maybe significantly influenced by the transverse compressive stresses among the strands, which is quite sensitive to the cyclic loading. To systematically explore the underlying mechanism within this complicated phenomenon, more cyclic transverse loads have been successfully applied on the CS1 cable based upon discrete element method (DEM) in Jia’s work (Jia et al., 2014). In this work, the effects of load cycles on the contact mechanical characteristics among strands in the cable cross section are studied in detail. The distribution characteristics of contact forces among strands are analyzed firstly. It can be found that the probability density of the normal and tangential contact forces all decay with an exponential law and they are unaffected by cycle numbers. Sequentially, the distribution and evolution features of the transverse compressive stresses of strands associated with cycle numbers are investigated. The numerical results show that the peak of the occurrence probability distribution decreases and the range of high stress becomes broader with increasing cycle numbers. In addition, the variation of each strand’s adjacent number with respect to cycle loads and its effect on the stress distribution are also presented. It is found that the stress distribution may be largely affected by the adjacent number, which is significantly related to the cycle numbers. It is promising to provide basic and useful instruction for further cable design.