ELECTRO-THERMAL AND MECHANICAL VALIDATION EXPERIMENT ON THE LHC MAIN BUSBAR SPLICE CONSOLIDATION

To eliminate the risk of thermal runaways in LHC interconnections a consolidation by placing shunts on the main bus bar interconnections is proposed by the Task Force Splices Consolidation. To validate the design two special SSS magnet spares are placed on a test bench in SM-18 to measure the interconnection in between with conditions as close as possible to the LHC conditions. Two dipole interconnections are instrumented and prepared with worst-case-conditions to study the thermo-electric stability limits. Two quadrupole interconnections are instrumented and prepared for studying the effect of current cycling on the mechanical stability of the consolidation design. All 4 shunted interconnections showed very stable behaviour, well beyond the LHC design current cycle.