A setup to perform X-ray irradiation tests on scintillating fibres for the SciFi project

An X-ray setup has been installed at CERN. The setup will serve for quality assurance purposes related to the acceptance of $11'000~ \text{km}$ of scintillating plastic fibres for the SciFi detector of LHCb. The X-ray tube has a tungsten target and can be powered up to 60kV, 30mA. The setup is intended to monitor the relative radiation response of the different fibre batches. The dose rate absorbed by the fibre under test can be tuned, adjusting the settings of the X-ray tube and adding aluminium filters of different thicknesses. When operating the X-ray tube without filters at a high voltage of $40\rm \,kV$ and an anode current of $30\rm \,mA$, the dose rate is about $23\rm \,Gy/min$. The maximum dose of about $35\rm \,kGy$ expected in the SciFi Tracker can be thus reached in about $1\rm \,day$.