High intensity proton beam impact at 440 GeV/c on Mo and Cu coated CfC/graphite and SiC/SiC absorbers for beam intercepting devices

The authors would like to acknowledge the support of CERN's Sources, Targets and Interactions (STI) Group, the Accelerator Consolidation Project at CERN, as well as M. Wendt and F. Caspers. This program is partially supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP16H03994. This support is gratefully acknowledged. The research leading to these results has received funding from the transnational access activity ARIES which is co-funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement no. 730871.
Beam Intercepting Devices (BIDs) are essential protection elements for the operation of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) complex. The LHC internal beam dump (LHC Target Dump Injection or LHC TDI) is the main protection BID of the LHC injection system; its main function is to protect LHC equipment in the event of a malfunction of the injection kicker magnets during beam transfer from the SPS to the LHC. Several issues with the TDI were encountered during LHC operation, most of them due to outgassing from its core components induced by electron cloud effects, which led to limitations of the injector intensity and hence had an impact onLHCavailability. The absorbing cores of the TDIs, and of beam intercepting devices in general, need to deal with high thermo-mechanical loads induced by the high intensity particle beams. In addition, devices such as the TDI—where the absorbing materials are installed close to the beam, are important contributors to the accelerator impedance budget. To reduce impedance, the absorbing materials that make up the core must be typically coated with high electrical conductivity metals. Beam impact testing of the coated absorbers is a crucial element of development work to ensure their correct operation. In the work covered by this paper, the behaviour of several metal-coated absorber materials was investigated when exposed to high intensity and high energy proton beams in the HiRadMat facility at CERN. Different coating configurations based on copper and molybdenum, and absorbing materials such as isostatic graphite, Carbon Fibre Composite (CfC) and Silicon Carbide reinforced with Silicon Carbide fibres (SiC-SiC), were tested in the facility to assess the TDI’s performance and to extract information for other BIDs using these materials. In addition to beam impact tests and an extensive Post Irradiation Examination (PIE) campaign to assess the performance of the coatings and the structural integrity of the substrates, extensive numerical simulations were carried out.
CERN's Sources, Targets and Interactions (STI) Group
Accelerator Consolidation Project at CERN
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan (MEXT)
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI) JP16H03994
transnational access activity ARIES - European Union 730871