A Facility for Accurate Heat Load and Mass Leak Measurements on Superfluid Helium Valves

Abstract

The superconducting magnets of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be protected by safety relief valves operating at 1.9 K in superfluid helium (Hell). A test facility was developed to precisely determine the heat load and the mass leakage of cryogenic valves with Hell at their inlet. The temperature of the valve inlet can be varied from 1.8 K to 2 K for pressures up to 3.5 bar. The valve outlet pipe temperature can be regulated between 5 K and 20 K. The heat flow is measured with high precision using a Kapitza-resistance heatmeter and is also crosschecked by a vaporization measurement. After calibration, a precision of 10 mW for heat flows up to 1.1 W has been achieved. The helium leak can be measured up to 15 mg/s with an accuracy of 0.2 mg/s. We present a detailed description of the test facility and the measurements showing its performances.