# SMTMS SM18 Test Management System

Vinod Chohan, Georges-Henry Hemelsoet, Ismaël Vadillo Eric Veyrunes,

CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

Abstract

Prior to their final preparation before installation in the tunnel, the
superconducting magnets of the LHC machine will be entirely tested after
reception on test benches in a modular test facility called as SM18,
using dedicated control systems. The testing facility, is being operated
by teams of highly-skilled and trained operators. This paper describes
the tools and management systems developed to help in real time all
involved operation teams in order to execute the tests in a defined
sequence and to judge the integrity of a magnet. These tools are also
being used by the management to track the efficiency of the facility as
well as other statistical controls.

## Introduction

The LHC ring consists of more than 1800 twin-aperture superconducting
magnets made by industry. The 1232 15-m long arc dipoles and the 474
short straight sections quadrupoles, hereafter called cryomagnets, shall
pass a sequence of conformity tests. The final acceptance tests,
including the cryogenic tests, are conducted at CERN by means of a
dedicated infrastructure, before final preparation and installation of
the cryomagnets in the tunnel. Some AB/OP personnel are in charge of
running the facility required for such tests.

All the 1800 LHC cryomagnets were planned to be tested in a 3-year
period. This challenging objective lead CERN to set industrial methods
and support. The current target is to reach a peak test capacity of up
to 15 cryomagnets per week. This paper describes briefly the typical
test sequence and how web-based systems helped to improve the
functioning of the facility in terms of operation and management.

## Context

Initially to complete this task CERN had decided to split the work in 3
parts among

1.  Mechanical tasks mainly connection and disconnection of cryomagnets

2.  Cryogenic part mainly cool down and warm up

3.  Testing and Measurement at warm and cold

The tests facility is equipped with 6 clusters and each one is equipped
to accept 2 magnets but sharing the same measurement electronic rack and
power supply.

In a typical situation like the one shown in Fig 1, we have:

-   3 magnets at cold (B1,D1,C2)

-   5 magnets in warm up or cool down (A2,B2,E2,E1,F1)

-   2 magnets in connection disconnection phase F2, A1

-   2 in other situation (Thermal cycle, in repair, waiting for tests)
    C1 D2

![](media/image1.png){width="3.2444444444444445in"
height="2.404861111111111in"}

Standard time to test a magnet can be seen like this

-   Connection 12 hours

-   Vacuum pumping 12 hours

-   Cool down 26 hours

-   Cold tests 36 hours

-   Warm up 12 hours

-   Disconnection 12 hours

Total time for one magnet is about 108 hours

### Technical infrastructure

The technical infrastructure is based on SUN workstation linked to VME
crates by MXI bus. We have SUN WS in the control room and also on floor
level. Those on the floor level are hard linked to the VME crate. Both
are running Labview applications. There is a mix between commercial
software and CERN made, but contrary to the accelerator control room,
applications are not made by the operation team. The electronic hardware
related to magnet protection and magnetic measurement is CERN made.

### Human infrastructure

Due to the budgetary constraint in 2002, it was decided not to outsource
the testing and measurement task but rather to depute people from the
operation group of CERN who will be helped by people from India under
CERN-DAE collaboration. This happened in November 2002.

At that time the test facility was used as a prototype for testing
pre-series magnets. The tests were conducted by specialists on an hour
by hour schedule while the facility was still at the building stage. We
had only 2 pre-series benches as compared to 12 at present.

### Work to be done

When the Operation team began its work in the control room, due to the
very experimental and not finished state of the facility, there was no
defined sequence of tests and no tool to put data in the LHC EDMS master
database called MTF --the manufacturing & tests folder.

The methods used at that time were the so called 'QUENCH table', heavily
loaded for analysis work & test sequence 'excel' sheets. It was planned
to generate 11(!) word files per magnet. The power tests results files
in AB-CO sun systems remained there only in 14 character long coded
files and it was foreseen to analyse all the data at the end of all
tests ...

This showed the limitation of the system (Excel files locked by test
coordinator, no global view, no way to extract statistics etc...). The
story of all work we have done for the tests will be presented later in
this workshop \[1\].

### What we tried to set up

Very soon it was realised that we should follow strict rules to be able
to finish magnet testing in time. This is why a "to- do" list was
created summarising the important tests to be done on each magnet. What
was new is that this list had also tasks done by other teams. This has
lead the possibility to generate statistics and to identify bottlenecks
in the tests. The main problem at that time was that we did not test
many magnets and nobody knew where we were losing most of the time. Each
team was blaming the others.

### The birth of the project

With so many people from different teams working together it became
obvious that we need fixed displays showing the current status of each
magnet and that we also need concurrent access to one common database to
track the work done (magnet by magnet but also week by week). Since no
manpower was available to work on this we decided to do it by ourselves
and to use the (very good) standard tools provided by IT division to set
up and run a web site. This is why we have chosen a solution based on
Microsoft products instead of a more open solution that would have been
harder to set up. This database was not planned as being an official
database but rather a tool to help us generating the reports required by
MTM group. If necessary the possibility remains to export the Access
database to a more robust system (Oracle)

A big part of this project was also the video distribution of various
screens of the site and the placement of TV monitor all around the site
and in the control room. This has eased the tests a lot. I Vadillo and
D. Bakker did this remarkable job.

## SMTMS 

Very soon the solution of a web-based database system got attention due
to its numerous advantages:

-   No duplicate work (Before we used to fill same information in many
    files)

-   Widely available (Workstation PC...)

-   Easily customisation to our needs

-   Data presentation separation (No more excel files with built in
    Macro)

-   Information open to everybody and even outside world (via the LHC
    project page)

### The early days

In the beginning of this project, only the test sequence was put on the
web. Thanks to a very wide literature on the web, some freeware (generic
db) and help from colleagues, it was possible to run the first
prototypes in 2 months of part-time work. The first project had only few
pages, but very soon people became interested in the tool. The security
became a major problem and we decided that only computers in the control
room should have the right to write data. This was achieved by
discrimination of the IP addresses.

### Web base database server

When the system became more widely used, there were constant requests to
provide different view of the same data (by bench, by magnet, by date,
by number of quench, by shift ...), processes that were so
time-consuming with the old system when people had to look at many Excel
files in different directories.

The system was also able to generate on the fly, old style quench tables
for backward compatibility and also a M(agnet) A(ppraisal) P(erformance)
S(heet) to help us to determine at first glance if a magnet has passed
the tests or not. From the same page it is also possible to generate
test sequence for each magnet.

### Basic Statistics

The system has evolved with many other statistics tools, some are
reserved for specialist, and others are open to everybody. The 2 more
widely used are:

-   The Test overview shows the current situation on the test bench and
    the time taken by each phase allowing operation team to react as
    fast as possible when a task is too long.

-   The weekly results shows week by week the number of magnets tested,
    the number of quenches per magnet, if the magnet is repeated, if it
    has fulfilled the criteria, etc ...

### Extension

The web site is also used to be able to send priority levels for cooling
and warming allowing us to cope as best with cryogenic limitations in
cooling and warming process.

The site is used to ease the entering of Data in the official CERN
Database, by computing direct links to the requested pages instead of
searching in the MTF database.

The web site also provides names of the magnet and test description by
LED driven display in front of each bench.

### Automating DB update

In the beginning, all tests were entered manually by the operator by
selecting a predefined test in a list. This was also true for the tests
we were not doing (Cool down for example). As the database became more
popular, management asked for more accurate time stamps. It was a
difficult task to fulfil this request. In parallel, the Task Tracking
System site was set up by AT/ACR people (J. Axensalva) to track the task
time. The TTS is a production follow-up application. It means that the
data recorded in it, is entered by the operators --via password
protected web forms, right after the completion of their current task.
Every test bench has its TTS list where the teams have to record the
progress of their job. When the "hand" passes to the next team in the
to-do list, they are automatically and immediately notified by a SMS
message sent by the TTS. The message shows which action is required (the
bench and actions are noted in the SMS message and, of course, on the
TTS main web page, accessible elsewhere on the CERN's intranet).The idea
was then that people should sign only once and we have developed a
system to automatically look in the other web site and update our
database with selected information provided from tasks performed by
other teams.

To automate the update of the tests we do, was more difficult as the
data was not centralised on one web server but distributed over many
files on different file systems. Thanks to the power of the perl
programming language and with interaction of the existing web site, it
was finally possible to scan files on different volumes and generate
corresponding test sequences. After this, the operator has to update the
record with the result of the quench analysis. The operator has of
course the possibility to delete or rename the automatically generated
report.

### Other jobs

The database also generates tables by manufacturer showing the number of
quenches for each.

The web site also serves to generate the correct name for the magnet in
case the magnet returns for retesting a second or third time. This
allows having different directories for magnets when they are retested.

## Conclusion

This database is still in use although it was initially criticised and
was planned to be replaced by the official MRM database (This is still
not the case). This project was challenging and very interesting. I was
completely new to Web programming but it was quite easy to learn due to
the help and support from experienced people at CERN and also due to the
vast information available on the web. This project has proved its
utility as the number of connected people is still rising. It is also
one of the medium available for people to see if everything is going
smoothly at the facility without the need of a phone call. Information
is now widely spread and corrective actions can be taken faster now when
bottlenecks are encountered.

## Acknowledgement

I would like to express my thanks to the management and to my direct
supervisor for the complete freedom I got for this project. I would also
like to thank people in IT division for their help and specially E. Roux
for valuable guidance he provided me for ASP programming. I am also
thankful to J. Axensalva and E. Veyrunes for their help and team spirit
in this project. Last but not least I am thankful to everybody who
directly and indirectly helped me to design and improve the web site by
their criticism and constructive remarks.

## References

\[1\] Vinod Chohan ,Operation before LHC operation: The SM18 Magnet
tests facilty, this workshop

\[2\] Axensalva, J., Herblin L., Lamboy JP., Tovar-Gonzalez, A. and
Vullierme, B., Control System and Operation of the

Cryogenic Test Facilities for LHC Series Superconducting Magnets, **LHC
Project Report 793**