The electrical circuits of the LHC and their description

by M. Zerlauth (CERN-AB)

Thursday 26 Jun 2003, 14:15 → 15:15 Europe/Zurich

AT Auditorium (CERN)

The superconducting magnets for the LHC accelerator, comprising 1232 main dipole magnets, about 450 quadrupole magnets and several thousand corrector magnets, are powered in 1612 different electrical circuits with currents feeding the magnets, ranging from 60 A (for small correctors) to 12 kA for the main magnets. The powering layout is extremely complex with about 80000 high current connections to be performed in the tunnel. A minor fault in either a circuit or one of the superconducting connections would obstruct operation of the accelerator while uncontrolled release of the stored energy could lead to severe damage of accelerator equipment and considerable down times. To support the build up, commissioning and operation of the LHC, the LHC Reference Database now unifies for the first time the geographical layout of the machine and the information about the powering of all 10000 magnets along the circumference in an Oracle environment. Starting with the electrical drawings, dedicated tools are used to transform the data into a digital format. The data is made available to the users either via direct access to the Oracle database or via Web-Interfaces within the LHC Navigator. Links to databases maintained by other groups (e.g. the Cablothek) and the LHC equipment catalogue provide approved data for all equipment in the electrical circuits. Several goals of this project have been already achieved such as providing tailored information for the interconnections, writing MAD input files for validation of the LHC electrical circuit description or configuring the powering interlock controllers in the LHC.