Resistance of LHC main bus bar splices at room temperature and at 77.4 K

As part of the quality control the resistance of newly produced LHC main bus bar splices is now routinely measured at room temperature (RT) in order to conclude on the electrical continuity of the bus bar stabiliser across the splice under operating conditions. In this note we present splice resistance measurements that have been performed at RT and in liquid nitrogen (LN) in the CERN Cryolab with “ideal” splices (represented by continuous dipole and quadrupole bus bars), and with dipole and quadrupole splices with different defects, which cause an additional RT splice resistance of up to 60 µΩ. The RT resistance (RRT) results obtained with the Cryolab set-up are compared to the calculated resistance values and with the so-called R-8 and R-16 resistance results, as they are measured in the LHC tunnel with a Digital Low Resistance Ohmmeter with a voltage tap distance of 8 cm or 16 cm. The RT to LN resistance ratio has been determined for all splices in order to study the influence of the resistance of the splice contact surfaces on the overall splice resistance.