CERN Accelerating science

Article
Title	An FPGA-Based Quench Detection and Protection System for Superconducting Accelerator Magnets
Author(s)	Carcagno, Ruben H ; Feher, Sandor ; Lamm, Michael J ; Makulski, Andrzej ; Nehring, Roger ; Orris, Darryl ; Pishchalnikov, Yu M ; Tartaglia, M
Affiliation	(Fermilab, Batavia, Illinois)
Publication	2005
In:	21st IEEE Particle Accelerator Conference, Knoxville, TN, USA, 16 - 20 May 2005, pp.3502
Subject category	Accelerators and Storage Rings
Abstract	A new quench detection and protection system for superconducting accelerator magnets was developed at the Fermilab's Magnet Test Facility (MTF). This system is based on a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) module, and it is made of mostly commerically available, integrated hardware and software components. It provides most of the functionality of our existing VME-based quench detection and protection system, but in addition the new system is easily scalable to protect multiple magnets powered independently and has a more powerful user interface and analysis tools. First applications of the new system will be for testing corrector coil packages. In this paper we describe the new system and present results of testing LHC Interaction Region Quadrupole (IRQ) correctors.