Experiment protection at the LHC and damage limits in LHC(b) silicon detectors

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), once in operation, will represent approximately a 200-fold increase in stored beam energy with respect to previous high energy colliders. Safe operation will critically rely on machine and experiment protection systems. A review is given of possible beam failure modes at the LHC and of the strategy adopted in the LHC experiments to protect the detectors against such events. Damage limits for the detectors are discussed.