Large Hadron Collider Control Room
CERN
Background
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the largest particle accelerator in the world. It is an international research project based at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, where scientists, engineers and support staff from 111 nations are combining state-of-the-art science and engineering in one of the largest scientific experiments ever conducted.
The LHC is the latest and most powerful in a series of particle accelerators that, over the past 70 years, have allowed scientists to penetrate deeper and deeper into the heart of matter and further and further back in time. The next steps in the journey will bring new knowledge about the beginning of our universe and how it works, as the LHC recreates, on a microscale, conditions that existed billionths of a second after the birth of our universe.
Project
Key to the construction of the LHC was the requirement for a new control room. CERN combined this need with a separate initiative to integrate the four existing control facilities on the site - three smaller particle accelerator control rooms and one handling all power supplies.
The collider consists of a series of 1,232 super cooled magnets forming a closed circle of 27 km. The LHC is buried underground and runs through French and Swiss soil as well as underneath the nearby mountain range. At various points along the accelerator's circumference, experimental chambers have been set up where physicists can observe the results of collisions between the particles of the counter-rotating beams.
IMPLEMENTATION
CCD introduced into to the LHC control room design programme a structured process involving consultation with key stakeholders, a systematic review of operational needs and a realistic assessment of what could be achieved in ergonomic terms.
We worked to the control room standard (ISO 11064) in designing the
programme. It involved tasks including:
• Analysis of comparable control room operations
• LINK analysis
• Preparation of an operational specification
• Development of workstation layouts and SAMMIE modelling
• Development of room layouts
• Review and assessment of room layouts
• Interior specifications including finishes
• CAD modelling of the completed room
Outcome
The client benefited from a centre which worked ‘first time' without any of the remedial work that often arises from an unstructured approach.
The new centre went operational in 2008. Our client has expressed a high level of satisfaction with our work and the outcome to this flagship programme.
FIND OUT MORE
Read about the Large Hadron Collider: http://public.web.cern.ch/public/Welcome.html