Overview of Identified Challenges in the Development Process of Superconducting Accelerator Magnets

Abstract

Development challenges in the domain of superconducting magnets are concentrated on technical problems in the current literature. Organizational, domain-specific challenges are often seen as secondary but must be considered with new holistic development approaches like Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) becoming more popular. This work quantifies the domain challenges and gives the foundation to derive success criteria for design support in the future. A systematic literature review has been conducted to identify the overall domain challenges, and extensive interviews in the CERN technology department have been carried out to identify the development challenges on a practical level. Problems in knowledge management have been identified as a major challenge in the development process and the general literature. The paper concludes by picking up the most important challenges from the interviews and literature and puts them into the context of the authors’ knowledge of electrical magnet design.

Tool support for implementing a methodology in magnet development projects at CERN

“…The instantiation process of the iPeM should be performed in the future not only for the openSE framework activities but also for magnet simulation activities. With magnet simulations getting more complex and the necessary multi-physics simulations, this formalization of magnet design activities to create a magnet design methodology is crucial to successful design projects (Kaeske et al, 2024).…”