Speaker
Description
In particle therapy of cancer, the radiation dose to tissues around the tumour can be reduced by employing a rotating gantry—a mechanical structure allowing the delivery of the beam to the patient from various angles. Gantries for ion therapy can benefit from the integration of superconducting magnets to minimize the size and weight of the machine. One significant challenge associated with the suspension system of superconducting elements is related to the management of their accuracy during both the alignment phase and operational stages. Concurrently, heat flow from room temperature to cryogenic levels through the suspension system must be restricted. The design of the supports must consider the variability of the load during operation, i.e. guarantee accuracy of the cold mass pose (position and rotation) under its own weight during a 360° gantry rotation. A literature review on existing suspension architectures has been conducted, leading to the proposal of an over constrained 8-support architecture as one possible solution. A lumped parameter model is presented to derive the pose of the suspended object as a function of the stiffness of the supports and the vacuum vessel.
The geometric architecture of the suspension system has been optimized minimizing the effect of the elasticity of the supports. A comparison of possible materials for the suspension elements has been done, among these, carbon fibre supports allowed to achieve a good compromise between stiffness and thermal insulation performances.
| Submitters Country | Switzerland |
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