Detection of Equipment Faults Before Beam Loss

TL;DR

This paper presents a method for early detection of equipment faults in high-power accelerators by analyzing equipment and beam signals to prevent beam loss and improve operational stability.

Contribution

It introduces a monitoring approach using multiple signal measurements to identify equipment issues before beam loss occurs, based on operational examples from SNS.

Findings

Identification of precursor signals indicating equipment deterioration

Successful detection of faults before beam loss events

Application of monitoring techniques in a real accelerator environment

Abstract

High-power hadron accelerators have strict limits on fractional beam loss. In principle, once a high-quality beam is set up in an acceptable state, beam loss should remain steady. However, in practice, there are many trips in operational machines, owing to excessive beam loss. This paper deals with monitoring equipment health to identify precursor signals that indicate an issue with equipment that will lead to unacceptable beam loss. To this end, a variety of equipment and beam signal measurements are described. In particular, several operational examples from the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) of deteriorating equipment functionality leading to beam loss are reported.