Mechanical Engineering and Design of Novel Collimators for HL-LHC

In view of High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) upgrades, collimator materials may become a limit to the machine performance: the high RF impedance of Carbon-Carbon composites used for primary and secondary collimators can lead to beam instabilities, while the Tungsten alloy adopted in tertiary collimators exhibits low robustness in case of beam-induced accidents. An R&D program has been pursued to develop new materials overcoming such limitations. Molybdenum-Graphite, in addition to its outstanding thermal conductivity, can be coated with pure molybdenum, reducing collimator impedance by a factor of 10. A new secondary collimator is being designed around this novel composite. New high-melting materials are also proposed to improve the robustness of tertiary collimators. New collimators will also be equipped with BPMs, significantly enhancing the alignment speed and the beta-star reach. This implies additional constraints of space, as well as detailed static and fatigue calculations on cables and connectors. This paper describes the mechanical design and the engineering calculations of such future collimators, focusing on the study via state-of-the-art numerical methods of interactions between the particle beams and the new materials adopted.