Design and operation of the air-cooled beam dump for the extraction line of CERN’s proton synchrotron booster

A new beam dump has been designed, built, installed and operated to withstand the future proton beam extracted from the proton synchrotron booster (PSB) in the framework of the LHC Injector Upgrade (LIU) Project at CERN. The future proton beam consists of up to1×1014 protons per pulse at 2 GeV and is foreseen after the machine upgrades planned for CERN’s Long Shutdown 2 (2019-2020). In order to be able to efficiently dissipate the heat deposited by the primary beam, the new dump was designed as a cylindrical block assembly, made out of a copper alloy and cooled by forced airflow. In order to determine the energy density distribution deposited by the beam in the dump, Monte Carlo simulations were performed using the fluka code, and thermomechanical analyses were carried out by importing the energy density into ANSYS. In addition, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of the airflow were performed in order to accurately estimate the heat transfer convection coefficient on the surface of the dump. This paper describes the design process, highlights the constraints and challenges of integrating a new dump for increased beam power into the existing facility and provides data on the operation of the dump.