Performance study of large-area glass resistive plate chambers with different spacer configurations

TL;DR

This study optimizes spacer configurations in large-area glass resistive plate chambers to improve gas flow, reduce inactive areas, and maintain high muon detection efficiency, combining simulation and experimental validation.

Contribution

It introduces an optimized spacer design reducing spacers by 24%, enhancing efficiency and uniformity in large-area glass RPCs.

Findings

Gas flow velocity homogeneity improved

Spacer reduction decreases inactive areas

Muon detection efficiency exceeds 95%

Abstract

Optimization of spacer and gas distribution inside glass resistive plate chamber (RPC) is reported. Simulation studies demonstrate improvements on the gas flow velocity homogeneity and lower vorticity inside the gas chamber. The optimized spacer configuration (76 spacers) decreases the number of spacers by $24\%$ compared to the original design (100 spacers), thus helps significantly reduce the non-active or low-efficiency area caused by spacers while maintaining similar deformation uniformity of the electrodes. Large area glass RPCs with 1x1 m$^2$ size using two types of spacer configurations are constructed and tested with cosmic muons events. The muon detection efficiencies for RPCs are greater than $95\%$.