The CERN Large Hadron Collider is routinely storing proton beam intensities of more than 100 MJ, which puts extraordinary demands on the control of beam losses to avoid quenches of the superconducting magnets. Therefore, a detailed understanding of the LHC beam cleaning is required. We present tracking and shower simulations of the LHC's multi-stage collimation system and compare with measured beam losses, which allow us to conclude on the predictive power of the simulations.Asian Committee for Future Accelerators (ACFA),American Physical Society Division of Physics of Beams (APS-DPB),Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS),European Physical Society Accelerator Group (EPS-AG)peer-reviewe
