Automatic High Voltage Conditioning of the Electrostatic LEP Separators without Conventional Programming

The TS Tool Kit is a generic, fully data-driven and user-configurable software system developed at CERN for supervisory, control and data acquisition applications. It provides a comprehensive framework to solve fairly complex process control problems requiring response times of the order of a second, without any need for conventional programming. The characteristics and benefits of this approach are discussed in the context of the new high voltage conditioning process for the electrostatic LEP separators. 1. EQUIPMENT Separation of the e+e- beams in LEP is achieved by a vertical electrostatic separation system comprising 40 bipolar separator units, arranged to provide local vertical separation bumps at all eight LEP interaction points. Each separator consists of a vacuum tank of 50 cm diameter and 4,5 m length and contains two high-voltage electrodes mounted on two insulating supports as shown in figure 1. Each electrode is connected via an alumina feedthrough to a high-voltage (HV) generator (∠ 175 kV DC). The gap width can be varied between 6 and 16 cm (1).