20 pages, contribution to the 2014 Joint International Accelerator School: Beam Loss and Accelerator Protection, Newport Beach, CA, USA , 5-14 Nov 2014. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1601.05207
Protection of accelerator equipment is as old as accelerator technology and was for many years related to high-power equipment. Examples are the protection of powering equipment from overheating (magnets, power converters, high-current cables), of superconducting magnets from damage after a quench and of klystrons. The protection of equipment from beam accidents is more recent, although there was one paper that discussed beam-induced damage for the SLAC linac (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) as early as in 1967. It is related to the increasing beam power of high-power proton accelerators, to the emission of synchrotron light by electron-positron accelerators and to the increase of energy stored in the beam. Designing a machine protection system requires an excellent understanding of accelerator physics and operation to anticipate possible failures that could lead to damage. Machine protection includes beam and equipment monitoring, a system to safely stop beam operation (e.g. dumping the beam or stopping the beam at low energy) and an interlock system providing the glue between these systems. The most recent accelerator, LHC, will operate with about 3 x 10$^{14}$ protons per beam, corresponding to an energy stored in each beam of 360 MJ. This energy can cause massive damage to accelerator equipment in case of uncontrolled beam loss, and a single accident damaging vital parts of the accelerator could interrupt operation for years. This lecture will provide an overview of the requirements for protection of accelerator equipment and introduces various protection systems. Examples are mainly from LHC and ESS.
The protection of accelerator equipment is as old as accelerator technology and was for many years related to high-power equipment. Examples are the protection of powering equipment from overheating (magnets, power converters, high-current cables), of superconducting magnets from damage after a quench and of klystrons. The protection of equipment from beam accidents is more recent. It is related to the increasing beam power of high-power proton accelerators such as ISIS, SNS, ESS and the PSI cyclotron, to the emission of synchrotron light by electron-positron accelerators and FELs, and to the …
The radio-frequency (RF) system is the key element that generates electric fields for beam acceleration. To keep the system reliable, a highly sophisticated protection scheme is required, which also should be designed to ensure a good balance between beam availability and machine safety. Since RF systems are complex, incorporating high-voltage and high-power equipment, a good portion of machine downtime typically comes from RF systems. Equipment and component damage in RF systems results in long and expensive repairs. Protection of RF system hardware is one of the oldest machine protection con…
Beam transfer, such as injection into or extraction from an accelerator, is one of the most critical moments in terms of machine protection in a high-intensity machine. Special equipment is used and machine protection aspects have to be taken into account in the design of the beam transfer concepts. A brief introduction of the principles of beam transfer and the equipment involved will be given in this lecture. The main concepts of machine protection for injection and extraction will be presented, with examples from the CERN SPS and LHC.
This paper introduces the protection of circular particle accelerators from accidental beam losses. Already the energy stored in the beams for accelerators such as the TEVATRON at Fermilab and Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) at CERN could cause serious damage in case of uncontrolled beam loss. With the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the energy stored in particle beams has reached a value two orders of magnitude above previous accelerators and poses new threats with respect to hazards from the energy stored in the particle beams. A single accident damaging vital parts of the accelerator could…
The challenging High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) beam requirements will lead in the future to unprecedented beam parameters along the LHC injector chain. In the SPS accelerator these requests translate into about a factor two higher intensity and brightness than the present design performance. In addition to the challenge of producing and accelerating such beams, these parameters affect the resistance of the existing equipment against beam impact. Most of the protection devices in the SPS ring, its transfer lines and the LHC injection areas will be put under operational constraints which are beyon…
This contribution acts as an introduction to the requirements of the machine protection system. As the first step, the basics interactions of fast charged particles, neutrons and $γ$-rays with matter are summarized. The architecture of a machine protection system based on beam loss detection is described. Personal safety issues and personal dosimetry are discussed, including the concept of radiation shielding.
Along with the protection of magnets and power converters, we have added a section on personnel protection because this is our highest priority in the design and operation of power systems. Thus, our topics are the protection of people, power converters, and magnet loads (protected from the powering equipment), including normal conducting magnets and superconducting magnets.
The HE-LHC study investigates the possibilities for upgrading the beam energy of the Large Hadron Collider CERN from 7 TeV to 16.5 TeV. This paper presents a preliminary investigation of intensity issues and machine protection for the HE-LHC.
Since 2010 the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the accelerator with the highest stored energy per beam, with a record of 140 MJ at a beam energy of 4 TeV, almost a factor of 50 higher than other accelerators. With such a high stored energy, machine protection aspects set the boundary conditions for operation during all phases of the machine cycle. Only the low-intensity commissioning beams can be considered as relatively safe. This document discusses the interplay of machine operation and machine protection at the LHC, from commissioning to regular operation.
Many particle accelerators operate with very high beam power and very high energy stored in particle beams as well as in magnet systems. In the future, the beam power in high intensity accelerators will further increase. The protection of the accelerator equipment from the consequences of uncontrolled release of the energy is essential. This was the motivation for organizing a first school on beam losses and accelerator protection (in general referred to as machine protection). During the school the methods and technologies to identify, mitigate, monitor and manage the technical risks associat…
Machine protection, as part of accelerator control systems, can be managed with a 'functional safety' approach, which takes into account product life cycle, processes, quality, industrial standards and cybersafety. This paper will discuss strategies to manage such complexity and the related risks, with particular attention to fail-safe design and safety integrity levels, software and hardware standards, testing, and verification philosophy. It will also discuss an implementation of a machine protection system at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory's Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS).
The PIP-II Injector Test 1 PIP2IT facility accelerator was assembled in multiple stages in 2014 $-$ 2021 to test concepts and components of the future PIPII linac that is being constructed at Fermilab. In its final configuration, PIP2IT accelerated a 0.55 ms x 20 Hz x 2 mA H$-$ beam to 16 MeV. To protect elements of the beam line, a Machine Protection System MPS was implemented and commissioned. The beam was interrupted faster than 10$μ$s when excessive beam loss was detected. The paper describes the MPS architecture, methods of the loss detection, procedure of the beam interruption, and opera…
High-power hadron accelerators have strict limits on fractional beam loss. In principle, once a high-quality beam is set up in an acceptable state, beam loss should remain steady. However, in practice, there are many trips in operational machines, owing to excessive beam loss. This paper deals with monitoring equipment health to identify precursor signals that indicate an issue with equipment that will lead to unacceptable beam loss. To this end, a variety of equipment and beam signal measurements are described. In particular, several operational examples from the Spallation Neutron Source (SN…
Risk is a fundamental consideration when designing electronic systems. For most systems a view of risk can assist in setting design objectives, whereas both a qualitative and quantitative understanding of risk is mandatory when considering protection systems. This paper gives an overview of the risks due to stored magnetic and beam energies in high-energy physics, and shows how a risk-based approach can be used to design new systems mitigating these risks, using a lifecycle inspired by IEC 61508. Designing new systems in high-energy physics can be challenging as new and novel techniques are di…
Injection and beam dumping is considered for a 16.5 TeV hadron accelerator in the current LHC tunnel, with an injection energy in the range 1 - 1.3 TeV. The present systems are described and the possible upgrade scenarios investigated for higher beam rigidity. In addition to the required equipment performance, the machine protection related aspects are explored. The expected constraints on the machine layout are also given. The technological challenges for the different equipment subsystems are detailed, and areas where R&D is necessary are highlighted.
The effective and reliable operation of particle accelerator machines is strongly related to obtaining and keeping the required ultra-high vacuum level. This paper briefly presents some generic requirements to take in consideration for components that need to be installed in a particle accelerator like design constraints, materials choices, chemical cleaning process, outgassing rate, and their possible mitigation. Moreover, it will discuss vacuum acceptance tests put in place in the CERN accelerator complex for both, baked and unbaked system.
Fermilab's Superconducting RF Beam Test Facility currently under construction will produce electron beams capable of damaging the acceleration structures and the beam line vacuum chambers in the event of an aberrant accelerator pulse. The accelerator is being designed with the capability to operate with up to 3000 bunches per macro-pulse, 5Hz repetition rate and 1.5 GeV beam energy. It will be able to sustain an average beam power of 72 KW at the bunch charge of 3.2 nC. Operation at full intensity will deposit enough energy in niobium material to approach the melting point of 2500 °C. In the e…
Chapter 7 in High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) : Preliminary Design Report. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is one of the largest scientific instruments ever built. Since opening up a new energy frontier for exploration in 2010, it has gathered a global user community of about 7,000 scientists working in fundamental particle physics and the physics of hadronic matter at extreme temperature and density. To sustain and extend its discovery potential, the LHC will need a major upgrade in the 2020s. This will increase its luminosity (rate of collisions) by a factor of five beyond the …
One of the main functions of the LHC beam loss measurement system is the protection of equipment against damage caused by impacting particles creating secondary showers and their energy dissipation in the matter. Reliability requirements are scaled according to the acceptable consequences and the frequency of particle impact events on equipment. Increasing reliability often leads to more complex systems. The downside of complexity is a reduction of availability; therefore, an optimum has to be found for these conflicting requirements. A detailed review of selected concepts and solutions for th…
Target protection is an important part of machine protection. The beam power in high-intensity accelerators is high enough that a single wayward pulse can cause serious damage. Today's high-power targets operate at the limit of available technology, and are designed for a very narrow range of beam parameters. If the beam pulse is too far off centre, or if the beam size is not correct, or if the beam density is too high, the target can be seriously damaged. We will start with a brief introduction to high-power targets and then move to a discussion of what can go wrong, and what are the risks. N…
