A novel approach to increasing the reliability of accelerator magnets

When a very large particle accelerator with about 8000 electromagnets, such as the proposed Next Linear Collider (NLC), has an 85% overall availabilit y goal, then all these magnets and their power supplies must be highly reli able and/or quickly repairable. An interdisciplinary reliability engineerin g approach, more commonly applied to aircraft and space vehicles, has been taken to design maximum reliability in the NLC main linac quadrupoles, whil e maintaining magnetic field performance and reducing cost. A specially ass embled team of engineers with a variety of experiences with magnets carried out a Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) on a standard SLAG quadrupo le magnet system. This process helped them identify which components were l ess reliable. Then they redesigned the quadrupole to avoid all the potentia l problems. A prototype magnet will be made and tested to ensure that funct ionality has not been lost.