Speaker
Description
Two 6-tonne beam dumps, each constituted by a graphite core encapsulated in a high-strength stainless-steel vessel, are employed to absorb the energy of the two Large Hadron Collider (LHC) intense 7 TeV/c proton beams during operation of the accelerator.
The beam dumps were initially conceived to repeatedly absorb up to around 300 MJ/dump. This has increased over the lifetime of the LHC as a result of upgrades to increase the physics reach of the machine. For the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) era, the dumps will have to repeatedly absorb up to 700 MJ/dump, during beam extractions lasting 90 microseconds. Several upgrades and post-irradiation examination interventions have been carried out since the first installation of the dumps, including modifications of the outer vessel and supporting structure, along with improvements to online instrumentation. Major developments in simulation techniques have also been deployed in order to better understand the dynamics of the high-energy beam absorption and the resulting thermo-mechanical effects.
The contribution will present the design, operational experience, and evolution of the Large Hadron Collider main absorber, from its early inception to the most recent operational experience, including the perspectives for a major upgrade in view of the increased demands of HL-LHC.
| Themes for the contribution | 6 Construction, fabrication, inspection, quality assurance: |
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