CERN, Geneva
The energy stored in the nominal LHC beams surpasses previous accelerators by roughly two orders of magnitude. The LHC relies on a complex machine protection system to prevent damage to accelerator components induced by uncontrolled beam loss. Around 20'000 signals feed directly or in-directly into the machine protection system. Major hardware sub-systems involved in machine protection include beam and powering interlock systems, beam loss and beam excursion monitors, collimators and the beam dumping system. Since the LHC startup in December 2009 the machine protection system components have been progressively commissioned with beam. Besides the usual individual component tests, global machine protection tests have been performed by triggering failures with low intensity beams to validate the protection systems. This presentation will outline the major commissioning steps and present the operational experience with beam of the LHC machine protection system.
