High Power Modulators Design for the ESS Linac
Project description
Following the project for the development of the reduced scale modulator prototype, the Faculty of Engineering of Lund University (LTH) was a key partner in the design of the full scale modulator units on a build-to-print basis. A total quantity of 33 modulators will be required to power up the ESS accelerator to an average beam power of 5MW. Each modulator delivers very high quality pulsed power at 115kV/100A amplitude with pulse widths of 3.5ms and pulse repetition rates of 14Hz. Altogether, they will constitute a park with total installed pulse power of 380MW and will represent more than 300 ton of the worldwide most sophisticated power electronics. Other than pulse quality, the quality of the power consumed from the AC electrical network needed to comply with the relevant standards, in order to not disturb the whole electrical grid in Lund area. This feature was achieved thanks to the utilization of Active Front End devices in combination with a constant power capacitor charging scheme, a subsystem well researched previously by LTH for several industrial applications. Compactness, reliability and cost effectiveness were also very important advantages of the proposed topology and design.
The complexity of their design and its unprecedented level of requirements put this development at the forefront of modulator developments at a worldwide scale and will be part of a new state of the art reference.
Year
Team
Lund University, Faculty of Engineering
- Carlos A. Martins, Team leader, Senior lecturer, Industrial Electrical Engineering and Automation
- Max Collins, PhD student, Industrial Electrical Engineering and Automation
- Mats Alakula, Prof. and head of department, Industrial Electrical Engineering and Automation
- Getachew Darge, Research assistant, Industrial Electrical Engineering and Automation
Core deliverables
- High Voltage power electronics expertise
- Magnetostatic and Electrostatic design of the High Voltage modules with Finite Element Analysis
- Global optimization studies of the complete modulator system in Matlab
- Simulation studies of the electrical circuits and control algorithms
- 3D CAD design of the complete modulator unit on a build-to-print basis. Development of control and Human Machine Interface software
Industry involvement
- LM Halvarsson Consulting AB, has delivered the complete 3D CAD mechanical design of the modulators on a build-to-print basis
- Loayza Dynamics AB, has delivered the complete software package for the modulator control and Human Machine Interface in Labview/CompactRIO NI environment