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Title: Tools for application management at Jefferson Lab

Abstract

The Software Controls Group at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) is responsible for slow controls for many Jefferson Lab facilities. The Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) is used as the basis of these control systems. The Controls Group developed and maintains over 150 control applications running on over 100 I/O controllers (IOCs). With so many applications, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain and upgrade older applications and still produce new applications. The difficulties became especially apparent this year as a major effort was undertaken to upgrade all control system applications to the newest versions of EPICS and VxWorks. Over the past few years, the Controls Group has worked on constructing a framework within which to develop and maintain applications more efficiently. As the framework has matured and applications have been structured to fit the framework, a number of tools have been developed to help with software maintenance and upgrades. This paper will describe some of these tools and how they are used to enhance the maintainability and reliability of the control system.

Authors:
; ; ; ; ;
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, Newport News, VA (US)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Energy Research (ER) (US)
OSTI Identifier:
754627
Report Number(s):
DOE/ER/40150-1285; JLAB-ACE-99-08
TRN: US0002253
DOE Contract Number:
AC05-84ER40150
Resource Type:
Technical Report
Resource Relation:
Other Information: PBD: 1 Oct 1999
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS; CEBAF ACCELERATOR; COMPUTERIZED CONTROL SYSTEMS; MODIFICATIONS; USES; MAINTENANCE; RELIABILITY; EPICS; SOFTWARE

Citation Formats

S. Schaffner, M. Bickley, A. Hoffler, M. Keesee, D. Wetherholt, and K. White. Tools for application management at Jefferson Lab. United States: N. p., 1999. Web. doi:10.2172/754627.
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S. Schaffner, M. Bickley, A. Hoffler, M. Keesee, D. Wetherholt, & K. White. Tools for application management at Jefferson Lab. United States. doi:10.2172/754627.
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S. Schaffner, M. Bickley, A. Hoffler, M. Keesee, D. Wetherholt, and K. White. Fri . "Tools for application management at Jefferson Lab". United States. doi:10.2172/754627. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/754627.
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@article{osti_754627,
title = {Tools for application management at Jefferson Lab},
author = {S. Schaffner and M. Bickley and A. Hoffler and M. Keesee and D. Wetherholt and K. White},
abstractNote = {The Software Controls Group at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) is responsible for slow controls for many Jefferson Lab facilities. The Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) is used as the basis of these control systems. The Controls Group developed and maintains over 150 control applications running on over 100 I/O controllers (IOCs). With so many applications, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain and upgrade older applications and still produce new applications. The difficulties became especially apparent this year as a major effort was undertaken to upgrade all control system applications to the newest versions of EPICS and VxWorks. Over the past few years, the Controls Group has worked on constructing a framework within which to develop and maintain applications more efficiently. As the framework has matured and applications have been structured to fit the framework, a number of tools have been developed to help with software maintenance and upgrades. This paper will describe some of these tools and how they are used to enhance the maintainability and reliability of the control system.},
doi = {10.2172/754627},
journal = {},
number = ,
volume = ,
place = {United States},
year = {Fri Oct 01 00:00:00 EDT 1999},
month = {Fri Oct 01 00:00:00 EDT 1999}
}
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DOI:  10.2172/754627
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  • The Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) has been funded by the US Navy to build an infra-red FEL driven by an energy-recovering compact SRF-based linear accelerator. The machine is to produce a 1 kW IR photon beam. The Jefferson Lab Accelerator Division is presently engaged in detailed design and beam dynamics studies for the driver accelerator. Principle beam dynamics and beam transport considerations include: (1) generation and transport of a high-quality, high-current, space-charge dominated beam; (2) the impact of coherent synchrotron radiation (CSR) during beam recirculation transport; (3) low-loss transport of a large momentum spread, high-current beam; (4)more » beam break up (BBU) instabilities in the recirculating accelerator; (5) impedance policing of transport system components; and (6) RF drive system control during energy recovery and FEL operation.« less

  • Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab; formerly known as CEBAF), operates a 4 GeV, 200 {micro}A continuous wave (CW) electron accelerator that re-circulates the beam five times through two superconducting 400 MeV linacs. Electrons can be extracted from any of the five recirculation passes and beam can be simultaneously delivered to the three experimental halls. As the commissioning stage nears completion, the accelerator is becoming a fully operational machine. Experiments in Hall C have been underway since November 1995 with beam powers of over 300 kW at various energies. Hall A has received beam for spectrometer commissioning, while Hallmore » B is expected to receive its first beam in the fall of 1996. Accelerator availability of greater than 70% during physics runs and excellent beam quality have contributed to making Jefferson Lab a world class laboratory for accelerator-based electromagnetic nuclear physics. With the high performance of the superconducting RF cavities, machine upgrades to 6 GeV, and eventually 8 to 10 GeV are now in the planning stages. Operational and commissioning details concerning all aspects of the machine will be discussed.« less

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  • A. Orbit Correction System Optimization: Recipes for optimizing an orbit correction system configuration at the design level are presented. Linear algebraic tools are applied to various flavors of response matrices to uniformly control unobservability, uncorrectability, and response matrix singularity. Application at Jefferson Lab is discussed. B. Orbit Correction at Jefferson Lab: Unique challenges posed by orbit correction, as well as algorithms and tools developed at the CEBAF accelerator at Jefferson Lab are discussed. C. Orbit Interpretation and Virtual Monitors: A new approach to developing an orbit correction package with software structural, algorithmic and operational advantages is introduced. It consists ofmore » an orbit interpretation module, a virtual monitor module, and a generic steering engine. Mathematical formulation, algorithms prototyped and tested on simulated and real data, and future possibilities are discussed.« less

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