Design and Development of Safety and Control Systems in ATLAS

The LHC at CERN is the largest particle accelerator in the world. It is preparing to run from 2022 to 2025 after which it will undergo an upgrade to become the High Luminosity LHC that is scheduled to start in the middle of 2027. The instantaneous luminosity will go from the previous 2.1$\times$10$^{34}$ cm$^{-2}$s$^{-1}$ up to 7.5$\times$10$^{34}$ cm$^{-2}$s$^{-1}$ and deliver a total integrated luminosity expected of 3000 fb$^{-1}$ by the end of its lifetime. This represents a great challenge in terms of radiation hardness that requires research, development and improvements in many areas such as electronics and safety. The ATLAS infrastructure requires vast amounts of knowledge in many areas in order to plan interventions or to react properly to unexpected events during operation and maintenance. A main contribution of this research to the safety of ATLAS has been the development of an ATLAS Expert System, a knowledge-base mean that contains an overall representation of the experiment’s infrastructure systems and their inter-dependencies in the way they function. This tool is currently being used by Technical Coordination and the sub-detectors teams to prepare interventions, understand their risks in all the infrastructure and analyse events in the ATLAS control room. In an effort to improve the safety infrastructure, a new water leak detection system has been developed based on a novel sensing technique, that improves the precision and reliability of the safety system. The system has been tested as a prototype in the service cavern of ATLAS and will be commissioned for operation during Run 3. In the context of the characterization of monolithic Pixel detectors, a Trigger Logic Unit has been developed for a new beam telescope. It has been used in the test-beam campaigns during LS2, and it has improved the operation procedures of the telescope. It provides a more flexible interface while preserving the functionalities and performance of the previous technology based on NIM electronics. Also, a test framework has been designed and produced for the study of the radiation effects in the memory cells technology used in the MALTA family.