Mechanical engineering, design and structural health monitoring at the ESS facility to enable science

Abstract

The European Spallation Source (ESS), which is established as a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC), is a multi-disciplinary research facility that is currently under construction. ESS has as vision to develop to a world class facility, enabling scientific breakthroughs in research related to materials, energy, health and the environment. The ESS facility is built by a collaboration of some 100 research institutes and universities. With its 5 MW average beam power, its linac will be the most powerful linac of all neutron spallation sources. Neutrons are obtained by delivering 2 GeV protons at a repetition rate of 14 Hz to the He-cooled solid tungsten rotating target. The Accelerator is built with a high percentage of In-Kind Contributions (IKC) with major accelerator systems being designed, prototyped and built outside ESS. The first major accelerator elements are now being assembled and tested with their first parts being installed. Future similar large-scale projects could likely be IKC-based, which is a powerful model. Within ESS, the Mechanical Engineering & Technology (MET) section is responsible for developing and maintaining mechanical engineering and design throughout the facility. The mechanical design is consolidated in the master model and available under the ESS Plant Layout, including all In-Kind Contributions as well as other related mechanical engineering content. Consequently, the MET section is also responsible for the design, development and supervision of the proton accelerator and tungsten target in terms of civil and infrastructure design for the physical plant. In parallel, ESS has set stringent goals for high availability and reliability on the machines during operations. In order to deliver these goals and monitor the aging status of critical parts of the machines, prototypes and one-of-a-kinds, the MET section has developed and currently implements Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) program on the accelerator primarily and other machines for Operations. The innovative strategy and application of Non-Destructive Testing for Machines (NDTM) is under development by the MET section with the leading benefit of utilizing the technology of Resonant Ultrasound Spectroscopy (RUS). Both reference and irradiated samples undergo RUS measurements to obtain spectral responses of the dedicated materials, for machine reliability and operations availability purposes.