Beam Based Measurements to Check Integrity of LHC Dump Protection Elements

LHC operation is approaching its nominal operating goals and several upgrades are also being prepared to increase the beam intensity and brightness. In case of an asynchronous beam dump at 6.5 - 7 TeV a non-negligible fraction of the stored energy (360 MJ during nominal operation) will be deposited on the protection elements (TCDQ and TCDS) located downstream of the extraction kickers. These elements are designed to protect the machine aperture from the large amplitude particles resulting from the asynchronous dump. A number of checks and measurements with beam have been worked out to verify the integrity of these elements, after a potentially harmful event, without opening the machine vacuum. Details on measurements and simulations performed to evaluate the validity of the proposed method are presented in this paper.