Control of the QUENCH Protection System at HERA

R. Bacher, P. Duval, S. Herb and H.G. Wu
Deutsches Elektronen Synchroton (DESY)


We describe the control of the Quench Protection System for superconducting magets of the HERA electron and proton storage rings in DESY. General control (operator to hardware) follows "standard model" -like concepts with multiple consoles communicating with front ends via the ethernet. The front end control is based on redundant VME cpu's running the VxWorks real-time operating system. The data-link to the lower level quench microprocessor and SPS based alarm control center are connected via the CAN fieldbus. A network server task communicates with consoles running MS WINDOWS and Visual Basic via UDP. Important quench data are automatically archived following critical events, allowing follow-up expert system analysis while the machine is brought again into operation.