Quench Propagation Kinetics Within ‘Iseult/INUMAC’ Whole Body 11.7 T MRI Magnet Shielding Coils

In the framework of the French-German consortium Iseult/INUMAC, focused on very-high-magnetic-field molecular imaging, the development of an 11.7 T whole body MRI magnet has been launched in 2006. This magnet is mainly composed of one wet and cryostable main coil and two fully impregnated coils that shield the magnetic field in order to meet the security requirements on the fringe field. To protect the magnet in case of quench, the stored magnetic energy (338.5 MJ) is dissipated in an external resistor and inside the two shielding coils windings. It is thus an important issue to master the normal zone propagation kinetics in those coils. This paper presents the 3d finite-element computations carried out to treat that problem and the more significant obtained results.