Examination of the CLIC drive beam pipe design for thermal distortion caused by distributed beam loss

Beam transport programs are widely used to estimate the distribution of power deposited in accelerator structures by particle beams, either intentionally as for targets or beam dumps or accidentally owing to beam loss incidents. While this is usually adequate for considerations of radiation safety, it does not reveal the expected temperature rise and its effect on structural integrity. To find this, thermal diffusion must be taken into account, requiring another step in the analysis. The method that has been proposed is to use the output of a transport program, perhaps modified, as input for a finite element analysis program that can solve the thermal diffusion equation. At CERN, the design of the CLIC drive beam pipe has been treated in this fashion. The power distribution produced in the walls by a distributed beam loss was found using the electron gamma shower code EGS4. The distribution of power density was then used to form the input for the finite element analysis program ANSYS, which was able to find the expected temperature rise and the resulting thermal distortion. As a result of these studies, the beam pipe design can be modified to include features that will counteract these distortions.