Thermal-hydraulic analysis of the DTT CS and PF pulsed coil performance during AC operation

•DTT PF and CS performance assessed with 4C code during plasma pulsed operation.•PF coils minimum temperature margin is larger than the design threshold (1.7 K).•Double-pancake cooling is adopted, leading to a 0.3-0.4 K higher temperature margin.•CS minimum temperature margin requirement (1K) is satisfied for nτ ≤ 150 ms. The EU DEMO fusion reactor, now entering in its conceptual design phase, will have to tackle several challenges, such as the long plasma pulse duration and the exhaust of very high heat fluxes from the plasma. The Divertor Tokamak Test (DTT) facility, a compact superconducting tokamak under construction at ENEA Frascati, will address the power exhaust problem in DEMO by testing several DEMO-relevant divertor solutions and operation scenarios. The DTT superconducting coils are the subject of the analyses presented here: as the tokamak must be very flexible to face different plasma scenarios, the design of the magnet system must be proven to be robust. In particular, the thermal-hydraulic performance of the coils operated in pulsed mode, namely the Central Solenoid (CS) and the Poloidal Field (PF) coils, will be analyzed. The CS is composed of 6 modules, layer-wound with Nb3Sn Cable-in-Conduit Conductors (CICCs), while the PF coils are pancake-wound. The two PF coils closest to the machine axis are wound using Nb3Sn CICCs, while the others adopt NbTi CICCs. All the coils are cooled by supercritical He (SHe) in forced flow. The pulsed operation of these coils induces AC losses, eroding their temperature margin: a detailed thermal-hydraulic model of the DTT pulsed coils is developed here using the 4C code. The model is then applied to the simulation of the two reference plasma scenarios, a single null and a double null, computing the minimum temperature margin. Different cooling options (single- or double-pancake) are investigated for the PF coils, while the sensitivity to the coupling time constant value is assessed for the CS.