Availability modeling approach for future circular colliders based on the LHC operation experience

• Main Authors: Arto Niemi, Andrea Apollonio, Johannes Gutleber, Peter Sollander, Jussi-Pekka Penttinen, Seppo Virtanen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Physical Society 2016-12-01
• Series: Physical Review Accelerators and Beams
• Online Access: http://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevAccelBeams.19.121003

Reaching the challenging integrated luminosity production goals of a future circular hadron collider (FCC-hh) and high luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) requires a thorough understanding of today’s most powerful high energy physics research infrastructure, the LHC accelerator complex at CERN. FCC-hh, a 4 times larger collider ring aims at delivering 10–20  ab^{-1} of integrated luminosity at 7 times higher collision energy. Since the identification of the key factors that impact availability and cost is far from obvious, a dedicated activity has been launched in the frame of the future circular collider study to develop models to study possible ways to optimize accelerator availability. This paper introduces the FCC reliability and availability study, which takes a fresh new look at assessing and modeling reliability and availability of particle accelerator infrastructures. The paper presents a probabilistic approach for Monte Carlo simulation of the machine operational cycle, schedule and availability for physics. The approach is based on best-practice, industrially applied reliability analysis methods. It relies on failure rate and repair time distributions to calculate impacts on availability. The main source of information for the study is coming from CERN accelerator operation and maintenance data. Recent improvements in LHC failure tracking help improving the accuracy of modeling of LHC performance. The model accuracy and prediction capabilities are discussed by comparing obtained results with past LHC operational data.