Abstract
Industrial Electron Linacs have become popular tools for a multitude of radiation technology applications in the fields of material modification, pollution control as well as national security. Although thousands of accelerators are being regularly used, failure analysis of Industrial Electron Accelerators remains a sparsely researched topic and not much information is available in public. Being an economically viable option, industrial electron accelerators need to have a 24 × 7 reliable operation. Hence, it is necessary to understand the failure modes and their mitigation techniques, so that the operation of the accelerators is stable, consistent and safe. In this study, failure mode analysis and identification of degradation mechanisms in an industrial 10 MeV RF electron linac have been studied, with emphasis on the electron gun. Failure modes of the linac and its sub-systems have been investigated. Failure Mode and Effects Analysis and Fault Tree Analysis techniques have been examined for the electron gun. Bayesian Networks are used for modelling the performance of electron gun sub system, utilising the operational data of the RF linac. This approach has facilitated the evidential reasoning process to investigate most probable mode of failure and preventive measures have been recommended for mitigation of failure.
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Abbreviations
- AC:
-
Alternating current
- ADS:
-
Accelerator driven subcritical
- BN:
-
Bayesian Network
- CERN:
-
Conseil Européen pour la recherche nucléair (European council for nuclear research)
- C & I:
-
Control & instrumentation
- DAG:
-
Directed acyclic graph
- DC:
-
Direct current
- FMEA:
-
Failure modes & effects analysis
- FMECA:
-
Failure modes, effects & criticality analysis
- FT:
-
Fault tree
- FTA:
-
Fault Tree Analysis
- HV:
-
High voltage
- ILC:
-
International linear collider
- LANSCE:
-
Los Alamos neutron science center
- Linac:
-
Linear accelerator
- LHC:
-
Large hadron collider
- MeV:
-
Million electron volts
- MTBF:
-
Mean time before failure
- MTTR:
-
Mean time to repair
- PFN:
-
Pulse forming network
- PSA:
-
Probabilistic Safety Analysis
- RBD:
-
Reactor block diagram
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge the support extended by Chairman, BARC Safety Council and Head, BARC Safety Council Secretariat for permission to carry out this work. We also thank Shri R. B. Chavan of Accelerator &Pulse Power Division, BARC for providing the operating data of 10 MeV RF Linac.
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This work is carried out in BARC as part of research. No separate funding is involved.
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Dixit, K.P., Vinod, G. & Garg, V. Failure analysis of electron gun of a 10 MeV RF linac. Int J Syst Assur Eng Manag 13, 2338–2355 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13198-022-01647-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13198-022-01647-9