Impact of Beam Losses in the LHC Collimation Regions

The upgrade of the LHC energy and brightness, from the 2015 restart at close to design energy until the HL-LHC era with considerable hardware development and layout renewal, poses tight challenges in terms of machine protection. The collimation insertions and especially the one dedicated to betatron cleaning (IR7), where most of the beam halo is intercepted to spare from losses the cold sectors of the ring, will be subject to a significant increase of radiation load, whose leakage to the nearby dispersion suppressors must be kept sustainable. The past LHC run, while displaying a remarkable performance of the collimation system, offered the opportunity for a demanding benchmarking of the complex simulation chain describing the beam losses and the macroscopic effects of the induced particle showers, this way strengthening the confidence in the reliability of its predictions. This paper discusses the adopted calculation strategy and its evolution options, showing the accuracy achieved with respect to Beam Loss Monitor measurements in controlled loss scenarios. Expectations at design energy, including lifetime considerations concerning critical elements, will also be presented.