Abstract
About 1400 Siemens SIPART PS2 intelligent valve positioners are installed in the LHC accelerator. They were selected assuming that their non-electronic parts are intrinsically radiation hard. This positioner variant is a split design: the electronic board located in a radiation protected area and the electro-pneumatic unit on the valve stem. The next LHC upgrade will result in a significant increase of the radiation levels and the initial radiation hardness assumption may not hold.A preliminary test on an electro-pneumatic unit was done with a cobalt 60 source. At the end of the test (99.8 kGy) one of the two miniature piezoelectric valves was damaged. After this result, the CERN CALLAB facility was used to irradiate 10 miniature piezoelectric valves while they were powered by an electrical signal. The first failures are observed after a dose of 137 kGy. The paper describes the test protocol and synthesizes the results.
Highlights
During the LHC accelerator design phase, various commercially available digital valve positioners were evaluated [1] in order to avoid using the analog I/P pneumatic control valve positioners
The observed failures are mainly related to the electronic components and Siemens proposed a split design of the SIPART PS2 intelligent valve positioner
The main electronic components are separated from the electro-pneumatic unit, the former is installed in radiation protected areas and the latter on the valve stem
Summary
During the LHC accelerator design phase, various commercially available digital valve positioners were evaluated [1] in order to avoid using the analog I/P pneumatic control valve positioners. The electro-pneumatic unit was assumed to be intrinsically radiation hard as its main components are a rotary potentiometer and two piezoelectric miniature valves; so far this assumption is valid as no radiation induced failure has ever been reported on the 1400 split SIPART PS2 valve positioners operating continuously since at least 10 years in the LHC.
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