Supporting System for the LHC Cold Mass

This note summarises the development work carried out on the supporting system for the LHC magnets since 1992. Various technical systems were assessed with variations in the materials, manufacturing methods and dimensions. The assessment concerned both the mechanical and thermal performance. Finally, a recommendation is made for the mass-produced LHC components

293 K - 1.9 K supporting systems for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) cryo-magnets

The LHC machine will incorporate some 2000 main ring super-conducting magnets cooled at 1.9 K by super-fluid pressurized helium, mainly 15m-long dipoles with their cryostats and 6m-long quadrupoles housed in the Short Straight Section (SSS) units. This paper presents the design of the support system of the LHC arc cryo-magnets between 1.9 K at the cold mass and 293 K at the cryostat vacuum vessel. The stringent positioning precision for magnet alignment and the high thermal performance for cryogenic efficiency are the main conflicting requirements, which have lead to a trade-off design. The systems retained for LHC are based on column-type supports positioned in the vertical plane of the magnets inside the cryostats. An ad-hoc design has been achieved both for cryo-dipoles and SSS. Each column is composed of a main tubular thin-walled structure in composite material (glass-fibre/epoxy resin, for its low thermal conductivity properties), interfaced to both magnet and cryostat via stainless steel flanges. The thermal performance of the support is improved by intercepting part of the conduction heat at two intermediate temperature levels (one at 50-75 K and the other at 4.5-20 K). These intercepts, on the composite column, are thermally connected to the helium gas cooled thermal shield and radiation screen of the cryo-magnet. An overview of the design requirements is given, together with an appreciation of the system design. Particular attention is dedicated to the support system of the SSS where the positioning precision of the quadrupole magnet is the most critical

A Large Scintillating Screen for the LHC Dump Line

The 7 TeV proton beam from the LHC ring is ejected through a long transfer line to beam dump blocks, approximately 100m downstream of the ejection septa, a series of dilution kicker magnets provide a sweeping deflection spreading the extracted beam over a 40 cm diameter area on the face of the beam dump cores. During normal operation, the quality of each dump event must be recorded and verified. The so-called âﾜPost-Mortemâ dataset will include information from the beam dumping system (logic signals, kicker pulsesâ¦) as well as from the beam diagnostics along the extraction lines. For this purpose, profile monitors in front of the dump blocks must be permanently available during machine operation. With more than 1014 protons stored in LHC, the energy deposited in the screen becomes an issue and thermalresistant materials have to be considered. In this paper, the design of this quite unusual device is presented. The different technical options considered for the choice of the screen material are discussed first. The complete layout of the installation is then described with a special emphasis on the mechanical design, the screen assembly and the choice of the radiation-hard camera used to observe the screen

The Tuning System for the HIE-ISOLDE High-Beta Quarter Wave Resonator

A new linac using superconducting quarter-wave resonators (QWR) is under construction at CERN in the framework of the HIE-ISOLDE project. The QWRs are made of niobium sputtered on a bulk copper substrate. The working frequency at 4.5 K is 101.28 MHz and they will provide 6 MV/m accelerating gradient on the beam axis with a total maximum power dissipation of 10 W on cavity walls. A tuning system is required in order to both minimize the forward power variation in beam operation and to compensate the unavoidable uncertainties in the frequency shift during the cool-down process. The tuning system has to fulfil a complex combination of RF, structural and thermal requirements. The paper presents the functional specifications and details the tuning system RF and mechanical design and simulations. The results of the tests performed on a prototype system are discussed and the industrialization strategy is presented in view of final production.Comment: 5 pages, The 16th International Conference on RF Superconductivity (SRF2013), Paris, France, Sep 23-27, 201

The New Superfluid Helium Cryostats for the Short Straight Sections of the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

The lattice of the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) contains 364 Short Straight Section (SSS) units, one in every 53 m long half-cell. An SSS consists of three major assemblies: the standard cryostat section, the cryogenic service module, and the jumper connection. The standard cryostat section of an SSS contains the twin aperture high-gradient superconducting quadrupole and two pairs of superconducting corrector magnets, operating in pressurized helium II at 1.9 K. Components for isolating cryostat insulation vacuum, and the cryogenic supply lines, have to be foreseen. Special emphasis is given to the design changes of the SSS following adoption of an external cryogenic supply line (QRL). A jumper connection connects the SSS to the QRL, linking all the cryogenic tubes necessary for the local full-cell cooling loop [at every second SSS]. The jumper is connected to one end of the standard cryostat section via the cryogenic service module, which also houses beam diagnostics, current feedthroughs, and instrumentation capillaries. The conceptual design fulfilling the tight requirements of magnet alignment precision and cryogenic performance are described. Construction details, aimed at minimizing costs of series manufacturing and assembly, while ensuring the high quality of this complex accelerator component, are given

A Modular Design for the 56 Variants of the Short Straight Section in the Arcs of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

The 360 Short Straight Sections (SSS) necessary for the eight arcs of the LHC machine have to fulfil different requirements. Their main function is to house the lattice two-in-one superconducting quadrupole and various correction magnets, all operating at 1.9 K in a superfluid helium bath. The magnetic and powering schemes of the arcs and the fact that the two proton beams alternate between the inner and outer magnet channels impose 24 different combinations of magnet assemblies, all housed in an identical helium enclosure. The cryogenic architecture of the LHC machine is based on cryogenic loops spanning over one half-cell (53 m) for the 4.6-20 K circuit, over a full cell (107 m) for the 1.9 K circuits, up to the full arc (about 2.3 km) for the shield cooling line. This cryogenic layout, when superimposed to the magnetic scheme, further complicated by the cryostat insulation vacuum sectorisation every 2 cells, creates additional assembly variants, up to a total number of 56. The required flexibility in the manufacture and assembly, as well as economic considerations, have led to a modular design for the different SSS components and sub-assemblies. This modularity allows to "specialise" the SSS at the latest possible assembly step of the "just in time" production line. This paper presents the conceptual design considerations to achieve this modularity, the SSS design retained for the series manufacture, and the assembly procedures recently validated on a prototype program at CERN

Sliding force measurements on the LHC RF contact Plug In Modules at 15 K and in UHV

Some sliding RF contacts mounted in the Plug In Modules in the LHC interconnects failed during a thermal cycle between 4.2 K and room temperature. Gold-coated copperberyllium RF fingers buckled during the warm up of the machine, indicating that one or more parameters during operation (e.g. the friction coefficient under vacuum) could be different from what was used in the calculations. This report describes the measurement of the longitudinal forces acting on the sliding RF fingers at operating vacuum and temperatures

Improved anchoring of SSS with vacuum barrier to avoid displacement

As presented in the previous speech, the incident in sector 3-4 of the LHC caused a high pressure build-up inside the cryostat insulation vacuum resulting in high longitudinal forces acting on the insulation vacuum barriers. This resulted in braking floor and floor fixations of the SSS with vacuum barrier. The strategy of improving anchoring of SSS with vacuum barrier to avoid displacement is presented and discussed

Cryostat for Testing HIE-Isolde Superconducting RF Cavities

The High Intensity and Energy ISOLDE (HIE-ISOLDE) project is a major upgrade of the existing ISOLDE and REX-ISOLDE facilities at CERN [1], with the objective of increasing the energy and intensity of the delivered radioactive ion beams (RIB). This project aims to fill the request for a more energetic post-accelerated beam by means of a new superconducting (SC) linac based on Quarter Wave Resonators (QWR). A research and development (R&D) programme looking at all the different aspects of the SC linac started in 2008 and continued throughout 2010. The R&D effort has particularly focused on the development of the high β cavities (β = 10.3%) for which the Nb sputtered on Cu substrate technology has been adopted. Two prototype cavities were manufactured and are undergoing RF cold tests. The pre-series cavity manufacturing is under way using 3D forged Cu billets. A single vacuum cryostat was designed and built to test these cavities at liquid helium temperatures. This paper details the main design concepts of the test cryostat as well as the results of the cryogenic behaviour of the complete set-up including the cryostat, RF cavity, tuner, and main coupler