THE FIRST STAGE OF THE POST MORTEM ANALYSIS SOFTWARE USED FOR THE HARDWARE COMMISSIONING OF THE LHC

After a failure during the operation of the LHC, leading to a beam abort or a power abort, a coherent set of so called “Post Mortem” information will be collected from the various sub-systems to analyze the causes of failure. To be able to understand the failure before resuming LHC operation, the collected information needs to be analysed within a few minutes and this requires a highly automated analysis system. To develop the Post Mortem Analysis software, we use a staged approach by providing self-contained software modules, first for the individual systems, such as the Quench Protection System, the Power Converter and the Power Interlock Controller, and second for the hardware commissioning when these systems will interact. All of these modules are made using LabVIEWTM and form the building blocks of the final Post Mortem Analysis software. A large part of the code developed over the last years for the quality test of the LHC magnets has been reused, profiting from the similarity of the algorithms. This paper describes the present state and the additional stages needed to build the final system.