Production summary for extended barrel module fabrication at Argonne for the ATLAS tile calorimeter.
The Tile Calorimeter is one of the main hadronic calorimeters to be used in the ATLAS experiment at CERN [1,2]. It is a steel/scintillator sampling calorimeter which is built by stacking 64 segments in azimuth and 3 separate cylinders to provide a total structure whose length is approximately 12m and whose diameter is a little over 8.4m. It has a total weight of about 2630 metric tons. Important features of this calorimeter are: A minimum gap (1.5mm) between modules in azimuth; Pockets in the structure to hold the scintillator tiles; Recessed channels at the edges of the module into which the readout fibers will sit; and Holes in the structure through which a radioactive source will pass. The mechanical structure for one of the 3 calorimeter sections, the Extended Barrel (EBA) was constructed at Argonne. A schematic of the calorimeter sampling structure and the layout of one of the 64 segments, termed a module, are shown in figure 1. Each module comprises mechanically of a precision machined, structural girder to which 10 submodules are bolted. One of these submodules, the ITC, has a customized shape to accommodate services for other detector elements. Each submodule weighs 850Kg and the assembled mechanical structure of the module weighs approximately 9000Kg (a fully instrumented Extended Barrel modules weighs {approx}9600Kg). A crucial issue for the tile calorimeter assembly is the minimization of the un-instrumented gap between modules when they are stacked on top of each other during final assembly. The design goal was originally 1mm gap which was eventually relaxed to 1.5mm following a careful evaluation of all tolerances in the construction and assembly process as shown in figure 2 [3]. Submodules for this assembly were produced at 4 locations [4] using tooling and procedures which were largely identical [5]. An important issue was the height of each submodule on the stacking fixture on which they were fabricated as this defines the length along the girder for installation, with a design gap between submodules on the girder of 0.3mm. During production we relaxed this tolerance to +0.3, -1.5mm. The height summary for submodules used at Argonne is shown in Appendix I. About 10 submodules fell outside the positive height envelope (due to the raw plate thickness being out of specification) and we constructed some custom short submodules to allow their use in module assembly. The structural girders were produced commercially following the Quality Control plan agreed to with the Tile Calorimeter collaboration and shipped to Argonne. The crucial tolerances on the girder are the key into which submodules are placed as well as the flatness of the key surface which are used in aligning submodules such that the azimuthal surface lies wholly an envelope of +0.75mm from nominal [6]. Another important characteristic of the girder are clearance holes through which the wavelength shift fibers pass to couple the light to photomultipliers located inside the girder, as described in [2]. Since these fiber bundles must be located to high precision, rather than position the holes in the steel to this precision, tooling was developed by which the precision pieces are glued into the girder [7]. This is shown in figure 3. More details on the pieces used to accomplish this interface to the readout electronics are discussed in [2].
- Research Organization:
- Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC)
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC02-06CH11357
- OSTI ID:
- 920978
- Report Number(s):
- ANL-HEP-TR-07-68; TRN: US0800962
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- ENGLISH
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