ATLAS TileCal LVPS Upgrade Hardware and Testing

UTA (University of Texas at Arlington) has been designing and producing new testing stations to ensure the reliability and quality of new TileLVPS (Low Voltage Power Supplies), also produced at UTA, which will power the next generation of upgraded hardware in the TileCal (Tile Calorimeter) system of ATLAS at CERN. UTA has produced two new types of testing stations, which build upon the previous generation of testing stations used in the initial production of the TileCal system. The first station is the Initial Test Station, and quickly quantifies a multitude of performance metrics of a LVPS. We have developed our own PC based program which graphically display and records onto file these metrics. A few notable metrics we are measuring are the system clock and its jitter. Excessive clock jitter in LVPS can affect system stability and derate the working range of the system duty cycle. This station also verifies protection circuitry of LVPS, which protects it from over temperature, current and voltage. The second is the Burn-In Station, which performs an endurance type test. Here, a LVPS is subjected to a stressed environment where the load and temperature are both elevated. In this environment the expected operational life of the brick is reduced, which serves as an indicator of how long the bricks will last under the normal environment in the detector. This will allow us to identify any components which fail to perform at their maximum rated limits. Different thermal systems were considered during the design, including utilizing the Peltier-Seebeck effect for the station.