International HiRadMat Workshop

Sabrina El Yacoubi — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 08:27:22 +0000

The much anticipated International HiRadMat Workshop took place in the summer of 2019 at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland with great success.

In brief, the HiRadMat (High Radiation to Materials) facility was initially designed as a test bed for collimator related issues linked with thermal shock investigations. However, with the experience and knowledge gained over the years since its commissioning the research topics have gradually been extended to other areas of accelerator technologies, for example testing of beam diagnostic systems, materials examination and prototype validation; all supported by granting beam time to external users. HiRadMat is a unique user facility at CERN designed to provide high energy, high-intensity, pulsed beams to a multitude of experiments where the beam is extracted from the CERN SPS (Super Proton Synchrotron) with up to a few 10¹³ protons/pulse at a momentum of 440 GeV/c.

Since commissioning in 2012, HiRadMat has completed over 40 experiments and thanks to the past EuCARD, and EuCARD-2 co-fund, and more recently with the ARIES European Programme, several user teams could take advantage of the facility through Transnational Access support. Researchers primarily from Europe, but also from the US and Japan, gained access to the facility amounting to more than 4500 Transnational Access hours since the start of operation.

Credit: Athina Papageorgiou Koufidou

The International HiRadMat Workshop was held from 10^th – 12^th July 2019 at CERN. The mandate of the workshop was to determine the future needs of HiRadMat beyond LS2. The workshop brought together a range of scientific communities to exchange ideas on current and future projects with objectives linked to the experimental goals of HiRadMat, i.e. High Radiation to Materials research. 81 attendees participated in the event which included 37 presentations from 12 different scientific topic areas including spallation sources, targetry, fusion, materials science and engineering. The workshop concluded with an extensive discussion session followed by a tour of the HiRadMat experimental area and a guided CERN tour of the ATLAS visitor centre and the CERN Synchrocyclotron.

Global spread of attendees at International HiRadMat Workshop.

From the range of presentations at the event there was a clear interest in the future operation of the facility. HiRadMat has been identified by not only the accelerator physics and targetry communities, but by materials scientists, engineers and theorists as a unique facility offering the opportunity to perform controlled experiments with specialised beam parameters, not found elsewhere. Similarly, with already 12 letters of interest for future experiments submitted prior to the workshop, and several more expected, there is undoubtedly support for experimental campaigns beyond LS2.

Full details including abstracts and presentations can be found on the workshop indico page: https://indico.cern.ch/event/767689/overview.

Credit group picture: Julien Marius Ordan

Tags:

accelerators

HiRadMat

Radiation

Physics

Date published:

Monday, September 30, 2019

Author:

Fiona Harden, Yacine Kadi, Nikolaos Charitonidis, Aymeric Bouvard

Article Category:

ACC

Issue:

Issue 30

Teaser:

The much-antecipated event took place in the summer of 2019 at CERN, with great success.

HiRadMat: testing materials under high radiation

Jennifer Toes — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 14:58:44 +0000

What happens to materials when they are subjected to high-energy, high-density, proton beams? How do materials, detectors and accelerator devices behave when they experience extreme conditions of temperature, compressive-to-tensile stresses and internal damage induced by high powered accelerator beams? What are the damage thresholds for superconducting materials after impact with LHC-type beams? HiRadMat, a facility designed for high-energy beam experiments for accelerator components, at CERN, helps experimenters answer these questions, and more.

The effects of high-energy proton beams on the properties of materials can potentially be catastrophic. Metal objects, for example, can experience structural and mechanical defects when exposed to such beams, which, if used as a selected material for nuclear reactors or high energy physics experiments, could result in significant operational complications and malfunctions. Having the capability to investigate such materials, devices or components in a safe and controlled environment is needed to ensure no unexpected problems arise during the final use of a selected material.

HiRadMat, an acronym for High Radiation to Materials, provides exactly this environment to researchers. At the facility, different materials can be exposed to high-energy, high-density, pulsed proton and ion beams to investigate the behavioural and damage limits of, for example, accelerator components and electronics for the LHC, or evaluate different material options for R&D prototypes. Since its commissioning in 2011, HiRadMat has remained a facility in high demand, providing a wide range of experiments access to its unique capabilities.

In the spirit of international collaboration and an open exchange of ideas, HiRadMat supports researchers from around the globe for a range of scientific purposes. It is part of the ARIES project, which aims to develop European particle accelerator infrastructures and also provides support for researchers to travel to and use the facility, via transnational access procedures.

An experimental set-up in HiRadMat Tunnel (Image: CERN)

HiRadMat uses a proton beam extracted directly from the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), from the TI2 injection line to the LHC [1,2]. A proton beam with a momentum of 440 GeV/c, providing a maximum pulsed energy of 2.4 MJ, is provided and comparable to those extracted to the LHC. At HiRadMat pulsed proton beams from 1 bunch to 288 bunches per pulse, at a maximum intensity of 1.2x10¹¹ protons per bunch (equivalent ion beams available), are provided.

The facility contains three experimental tables. A Beam Observation TV Monitor (BTV) has been installed upstream of the experimental set-ups and provides all users with reliable and comparable beam information in real-time, i.e. beam position, beam stability and beam spot size during beam operation. Different optics are available depending on the location of the experiment, but a standard 1σ r.m.s. beam radius of 0.5 – 2 mm is offered, with others available upon discussion. Further details on the beam operation of HiRadMat can be found in the literature by Charitonidis et al. [3]

Since HiRadMat took its first proton beam in 2012, it has continued to provide beam to a variety of projects, including studies into novel materials for collimators, superconducting materials and detector devices. It has continued to develop as a facility with improvements to equipment available for all users as well as an increase of monitoring systems to ensure smooth operation during beam-time. HiRadMat also contains an additional area providing improved shielding for electronics required for experiments, a surface laboratory and a dedicated control room.

If HiRadMat sounds like the perfect facility to test your materials, devices and products, please contact the HiRadMat team directly.

[1] I. Efthymiopoulos et al. “HiRadMat: A New Irradiation Facility for Material Testing at CERN”, Proceedings IPAC, 2011: 1665-1667.

[2] C. Hessler et al. “Beam Line Design for the CERN HiRadMat Test Facility”, Proceedings PAC, 2009: 3796-3798.

[3] N. Charitonidis et al. “HiRadMat: A high-energy, pulsed beam, material irradiation facility”, 4th International Conference on Advancements in Nuclear Instrumentation Measurement Methods and their Applications, Lisbon, 2015: 1-3.

Tags:

ARIES

HiRadMat

radiation testing

Date published:

Thursday, December 7, 2017

Author:

Athena Papageorgiou Koufidou & Fiona J. Harden (CERN)

Article Category:

ARI

Issue:

issue 23