Education
HOW IS LIFE IN... Zürich, Switzerland WRITTEN BY LISELOTTE VAN WISSEN After a long search for a suitable internship my advisor suggested an internship at the ETH in Zürich. I didn’t know much about the place or the university. And even though it wasn’t what I was originally looking for, it did suit my situation and sounded nice. So, I decided to just go for it. In the end, it worked out well and I had an amazing time and experience, and I can look back on it with joy and with lots of great memories. Project and University The project I worked on was executed by the ETH but commissioned by CERN. It focusses on reinforcing epoxies to be suitable for the impregnation of superconducting magnets. Superconducting magnets are very strong magnets which can reach a magnetic flux of 16 Tesla. Due to the large Lorenz forces acting on the coils local stresses and strains occur, which will result in energy release in the form of heat. Since the operating temperature of the magnet is around 10 Kelvin, this heat release will make it shut down. So In an attempt to counteract this effect, the coils are impregnated with epoxy to serve as a buffer to prevent local stress and strain.
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The epoxy used to impregnate the coil needs to be tough and strong enough to withstand the forces that are being put upon it. If this is not the case it can be that the epoxy starts fracturing which will lead to energy release in the form of heat, and thus defeating the initial purpose of the epoxy. For my research I investigated the influence of certain fillers on the fracture toughness of different epoxies. With the ultimate goal of increasing the fracture toughness. This meant I spent most of my time in different laboratories mixing and preparing epoxies, making different types of samples and preforming a variety of tests to determine the fracture toughness and other important material properties.
