Development of a CO2 Cooling Test Facility from the Vertex Locator Thermal Control System

Lunt, Stuart

Development of a CO2 Cooling Test Facility from the Vertex Locator Thermal Control System

Thesis / Dissertation

2024

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Department of Electrical Engineering

Faculty

Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment

Abstract

The Vertex Locator Thermal Control System (VTCS) was a mechanically pumped, evaporative CO2 cooling system developed for silicon strip detectors in the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment at the European Organisation for Nuclear Physics (CERN). This type of cooling has become increasingly common in high-energy physics experiments, making their design and testing increasingly more important. The Detector Technologies (DT) group chose to reuse the hard ware from the VTCS after it was retired and convert it into a test facility for future detectors. This dissertation describes the analysis and redesign of the electrical, fluid and control systems which was undertaken to optimise the design for its new role and to bring it into line with current standards in the field. Alongside the hardware design, a model of the system was developed in Simulink, enabling the performance to be simulated with different hardware configurations and to assess its suitability for different applications. Delays in travel and procurement caused by the COVID-19 pandemic did not allow final construction and commissioning to be fully completed by the end of the project.

Keywords

Engineering

Reference:

Collections

Masters

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