1840 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 13, NO.

2, JUNE 2003

Distribution of Stress in Force-Balanced

Coils on Virial Theorem
H. Tsutsui, S. Nomura, N. Watanabe, C. Suzuki, S. Kajita, Y. Ohata, S. Tsuji-Iio, and R. Shimada

Abstract—Distributions of stress on a device with helical coils

for the superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES) are an-
alyzed experimentally and numerically. In the previous work, we
showed a theoretical limit of stored energy in a toroidal SMES
system by the virial theorem. To verify the theoretical limit, we
designed and construct a small device which is composed of two
sets of helical superconducting coils and a toroidal frame of alu-
minum alloy. Strains by electromagnetic force on the frame were
obtained experimentally. Distributions of stress on a toroidal shell
with a similar configuration to the device are numerically calcu-
lated. Comparing the results of the experiments and the numerical
calculations, a qualitative agreement of stress distribution between Fig. 1. Coordinate system.
the calculation and the experiment is obtained in the toroidal direc-
tion, while discrepancies of stress in the poloidal direction are not
negligible. coil with the minimum stress under the condition of a fixed
magnetic energy [8]. It means that this coil enables us to make
Index Terms—Coil, energy, magnetic field, SMES, stress, super-
conductivity, tensor, virial theorem. a SMES system with less amount of supporting structure,
because mass of the structure is proportional to the maximum
stress.
I. INTRODUCTION Following our theory, we designed and constructed a coil-
frame system [9] in order to confirm our concept of minimum
T HE VIRIAL theorem shows a relation between long time
averaged or constant values of kinetic energy and energy
of field. Famous examples are a relation of gravity potential and
stress configuration. In this work, we calculate stress distribu-
tions in the coil system and compare the results with experi-
kinetic energy in astrophysics, and a relation between the kinetic ments [9].
energy and potential energy of charged particles in electromag- In the next section, we explain the virial theorem for a struc-
netics. In a field of superconducting magnetic energy storage ture with electromagnetic force. In Section III, the virial the-
(SMES), relations between mass of the structure and stored en- orem to a thin toroidal shell is investigated and a optimal coil for
ergy are called the virial theorem [1], [2]. energy storage is presented. In Section IV, we investigate stress
In the last few years, we had been developing a SMES system distribution and compare the theory with experiments, and sum-
with a force balanced coil (FBC) [3]–[6] which is a helical marize this work in Section V.
type hybrid coil of toroidal field (TF) coils and a solenoidal
coil. Their combination removes the net electromagnetic force II. VIRIAL THEOREM IN ELECTROMAGNETIC STRUCTURE
in major radius direction [3] by canceling the centering force When electromagnetic forces and stress are balanced in a
of the TF coils and the hoop force of the solenoidal coil. Fur- nonmagnetic material , the following equilibrium equations
thermore, we showed a configuration without the tilting force, hold
by giving poloidal dependence to pitch angle of helical winding
[7]. Next, we modified our works and proposed a stress balanced (1)
coil (SBC) [5] which is able to cancel the electromagnetic force
(2)
at the point where magnetic field is strongest.
Recently we extended and generalized our studies with the (3)
virial theorem, and showed the way to minimize the stress
working in coils [8]. In addition, we conceptually designed a Here is current density, is magnetic flux density, is a
stress tensor. The tensor on the semi-toroidal coordinate
system depicted in Fig. 1 is expressed as follows:
Manuscript received August 5. This work was supported in part by New En-
ergy and Industrial Technology Development Organization, Japan and in part
by the collaborating research program at Central Research Institute of Electric
Power Industry, Japan. (4)
H. Tsutsui, N. Watanabe, C. Suzuki, S. Kajita, Y. Ohata, S. Tsuji-Iio, and R.
Shimada are with the Research Laboratory for Nuclear Reactors, Tokyo Institute
of Technology, Tokyo 152-8550, Japan (e-mail: htsutsui@nr.titech.ac.jp).
S. Nomura is with the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. where off diagonal elements are sharing stresses. Here we con-
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TASC.2003.812921 sider the case that the current is flowing only in the material
1051-8223/03$17.00 © 2003 IEEE
TSUTSUI et al.: DISTRIBUTION OF STRESS IN FORCE-BALANCED COILS ON VIRIAL THEOREM
where the electromagnetic force is acting. From (1)–(3) with the
Gauss’s integral theorem, the next equation is obtained
(5)
This relation is called the virial theorem [1]. Because the right
hand side (the magnetic energy ) is positive, positive stress
(tensile stress) is necessary to store the magnetic energy. Fur-
thermore, to minimize the maximum stress under the condition
of a fixed magnetic energy, they are effective to remove nega-
tive stress (compressive stress) and to have uniform tensile stress
distribution.
Next we define the normalized stress as
(6)
(7)
where is the volume of . Using the above normalized stress,
the virial theorem (5) is reduced to the simple form [8]
(8)
Hence it is clear that the uniform stress distribution is required
in order to decrease the maximum stress under the condition of
a fixed magnetic energy and volume.
III. VIRIAL THEOREM ON THIN TOROIDAL SHELL
Here we consider a toroidal shell with a circular cross section
whose thickness is much smaller than the major radius
and the minor radius . The current distribution on the torus is
determined so that the magnetic surface coincides with the torus.
Under the assumption, next relation holds.
(9)
Therefore, we put in this paper.
First of all, we consider the case that the system is axisym-
metric and its aspect ratio is large enough, in which
sharing stresses are neglected and principal stresses are , .
According to the principle of virtual work, we can get the nor-
malized stress [8] defined by (6),
(10)
(11)
where
(12)
is the ratio of toroidal current and poloidal current , and
called a pitch number of a coil. The relations between the pitch
number and the normalized stress are shown in Fig. 2. This
figure shows that the principal stress in the toroidal direction
changes from tension (positive) to compression (negative) as
the pitch number increases. This characteristic is indepen-
1841
Fig. 2. Relations between pitch number and averaged normalized stress
for aspect ratio . Solid and dashed lines are and ,
respectively.
dent of the aspect ratio . The principal stress in the poloidal
direction reaches the value of and becomes larger than that
in the toroidal direction with increasing . Finally, ,
which are the values of conventional TF coils in the
limit of , while poloidal field (PF) coils are represented
in .
When we get the sum of the normalized stresses with (9), (10)
and (11),
the virial theorem (8) is satisfied. From (10) and (11), the av-
erage stress in toroidal direction or poloidal direction vanishes
in the case of
(13)
(14)
respectively. In particular, coils with the pitch numbers of (13)
and (14) are called the force-balanced coil (FBC) [3] and the
stress-balanced coil (SBC) [5], respectively. When the structure
is uniform, a configuration with the minimum stress is obtained
when
(15)
where the configuration has the next pitch number,
(16)
A coil with the pitch number (16) is named as a FBC with the
virial-limited condition, or simply a virial-limited coil (VLC)
[8] which reduces the maximum stress to compared with
TF coil, and to half compared with conventional FBC. Since the
mass of structure is proportional to the stress, our VLC requires
only structure of TF coil.
IV. STRESS DISTRIBUTION ON TOROIDAL SHELL
In the previous section, we have investigated the case that the
aspect ratio is sufficiently large, where we are able to ignore
the toroidal effect. In this section, we evaluate the poloidal dis-
tribution of stress to investigate the influence on the stress.
Supposing that the pressure inside the torus is
larger than that of outside, the force balance equations of the
1842 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 13, NO. 2, JUNE 2003

infinites-imal volume in the directions of , ,

are obtained as follows:

(17)

(18)

(19)
(20)

where

(21)

are the tensions and sharing stress for the unit length. Boundary
conditions are automatically determined by the continuity
of stress and the fact that stress with vanishes.
These equations enable us to calculate the stress distribution
on a toroidal shell with a circular cross section whose current
layer coincides with the magnetic surface. When we obtain the
toroidal current distribution numerically, the pressure outside
the torus is obtained from the toroidal surface current density
. Hence the magnetic pressure acting on the torus is given by

(22) Fig. 3. Poloidal distributions of normalized stress in the coil-frame

system with . Experimental results for PFC, VLC . TFC
are depicted by symbols. Numerical results in the shell model are shown by
in axisymmetric systems. When the distribution of the magnetic lines. Oscillated lines are distributions with perturbed magnetic pressure of
pressure is not axisymmetric and has a periodic symmetry, we .
can expand it as follows:

(23)

where is an amplitude of nonaxisymmetric mode, and and

are toroidal and poloidal mode numbers, respectively. For the
magnetic pressure distribution (23), the solution of (17)–(19)
also has a factor , where is the imaginary unit. Separating
a variable , (18) and (19) are reduced to

(24)
Fig. 4. A birdview of a coil-frame system with two sets of coils whose current
(25) ratio is arbitrary changed and can demonstrate arbitrary pitch number.

Solving this differential equation system, poloidal distribu- TABLE I

PARAMETERS OF A COIL-FRAME SYSTEM TO VERIFY
tions of stress in some kinds of coils are obtained in Fig. 3, where THE VIRIAL-LIMIT CONDITION
the poloidal angle is defined so as to take 0 at the outside of the
torus and take at the inside of the torus as shown in Fig. 1. Nu-
merical results are depicted by lines, and oscillated lines are dis-
tributions with perturbed magnetic pressure of ,
and . A toroidal angle in Fig. 3 is determined such that

(26)

where has the local minimum value. This figure shows that
the stress in VLC is reduced compared with that in TFC and
PFC, and the nearly flat distribution of stress is accomplished,
theoretically.
Symbols in Fig. 3 are results of the experiments by use of a
device which consists of a frame and two sets of coils wound on
the different layers as shown in Fig. 4. Parameters of the device
are represented in Table I. The device can simulate a coil with
arbitrary pitch number by changing the current ratio of two sets
of coils as shown in Table II. Triaxial strain gauges, which are
TSUTSUI et al.: DISTRIBUTION OF STRESS IN FORCE-BALANCED COILS ON VIRIAL THEOREM
TABLE II
RELATION OF CURRENT RATIO , PITCH NUMBER , MAXIMUM
STRESS, AND SIMULATED COIL IN THE COIL-FRAME SYSTEM
located beside the orbit (26), are glued on the frame. Strains
, were obtained experimentally and reported in [9]. The
stresses in Fig. 3 are evaluated by
(27)
(28)
where and are Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio, respec-
tively. Fig. 3 shows that VLC is the flattest distribution in both
the results of the experiments and the numerical calculations,
and reduces the maximum stress compared with that of the other
coils. Comparing of the experiments and the numerical cal-
culations, the relation shown in Fig. 2 between averaged stresses
and a pitch number of a coil is qualitatively confirmed. The dis-
tribution of in the experiments also agrees with the calcu-
lations qualitatively, while discrepancies of are not negli-
gible. Although the calculation uses the very thin shell model,
the thickness of the device is 14 mm on the frame and not
negligible compared with the minor radius mm. Hence
the thickness strongly affects the shorter direction on the torus.
Another significant difference between the model and the device
is the nonuniformity of the structure. These results show that the
shell model including the nonuniform electromagnetic force by
the helical coils is not sufficient to simulate the device in the
experiments.
1843
V. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
In order to verify the concept of the optimal coil to store
magnetic energy based on the virial theorem, the device com-
posed of a toroidal frame and two sets of helical coils wound
on two layers was constructed. The experiments with the device
show that our optimal coil (VLC) achieves the minimum and
flat stress distribution, which is also obtained by the numerical
calculations with the shell model. Comparing the results of the
experiments and the numerical calculations, good agreements of
the stress in the toroidal direction are obtained, while the stress
in the poloidal direction does not agree to each other. Although
the very thin shell is assumed in the calculations, the thickness
of our device is not negligible compared with the minor radius.
Furthermore, the uniform material of the structure is assumed
in the model although the device is composed of the frame and
wires, and has distribution of Young’s modulus.
In conclusion, the VLC concept is qualitatively proved. How-
ever, three dimensional analysis including the nonuniformity of
the structure is required in order to complete the VLC concept.
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