A Modular Design for the 56 Variants of the Short Straight Section in the Arcs of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

The 360 Short Straight Sections (SSS) necessary for the eight arcs of the LHC machine have to fulfil different requirements. Their main function is to house the lattice two-in-one superconducting quadrupole and various correction magnets, all operating at 1.9 K in a superfluid helium bath. The magnetic and powering schemes of the arcs and the fact that the two proton beams alternate between the inner and outer magnet channels impose 24 different combinations of magnet assemblies, all housed in an identical helium enclosure. The cryogenic architecture of the LHC machine is based on cryogenic loops spanning over one half-cell (53 m) for the 4.6-20 K circuit, over a full cell (107 m) for the 1.9 K circuits, up to the full arc (about 2.3 km) for the shield cooling line. This cryogenic layout, when superimposed to the magnetic scheme, further complicated by the cryostat insulation vacuum sectorisation every 2 cells, creates additional assembly variants, up to a total number of 56. The required flexibility in the manufacture and assembly, as well as economic considerations, have led to a modular design for the different SSS components and sub-assemblies. This modularity allows to "specialise" the SSS at the latest possible assembly step of the "just in time" production line. This paper presents the conceptual design considerations to achieve this modularity, the SSS design retained for the series manufacture, and the assembly procedures recently validated on a prototype program at CERN.