Technical Design Report Super Fragment Separator
Technical Design Report Super Fragment Separator
Technical Design Report Super Fragment Separator
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
DRAFT<br />
Figure 2.4.112: Location of beam catcher positions behind the degrader station at PF2. Trajectories of the<br />
fragment beam are shown in black and possible trajectories of the primary beam in red. As the primary<br />
beam loses in most cases more energy than the fragments the beam catchers are needed mainly on one<br />
side.<br />
2.4.11.1.5 Radiation damage<br />
Radiation damage in the carbon part of the beam catcher is caused by three mechanisms:<br />
• Elastic collisions of the primary beam, fragments or neutrons with the carbon atoms,<br />
• for high linear energy deposition the heating by the electronic energy loss can cause microscopic<br />
material melting and track formation. This happens in graphite above a threshold<br />
of about dE/dx = 7.3 ± 1.5 keV/nm [52] and will therefore occur mainly in the Bragg peak<br />
close to the end of the range,<br />
• spallation of the nuclides in the material and creation of other chemical elements.<br />
The number of displacements per atom (DPA) resulting from elastic collisions was estimated with<br />
the PHITS code. The result is shown in Figure 2.4.113 as a function of the depth in the beam<br />
catcher for a total number of ions of 10 20 uranium ions, corresponding to 116 days of operation per<br />
year over 10 years with the full intensity and energy. A strong peak appears towards the end of the<br />
range in carbon near the maximum of nuclear energy loss. But as the range and beam position will<br />
vary in different experiments the number of DPAs will stay on average below 1.<br />
The track formation imposes the strongest limit. First tests have shown that rather low rates of<br />
10 13 /cm 2 of uranium ions at Bragg peak energies already lead to significant material modifications.<br />
At room temperature almost each ion will create a track in this energy regime, leading to swelling<br />
of the material by about 1% in volume and hardening of the material [53]. On the other hand at<br />
higher energies like at the entrance to the catcher the probability of track formation is reduced by a<br />
factor of 1000. Almost no amorphisation was observed in HOPG graphite for irradiation at a<br />
temperature above 800K [54].<br />
121