Quench protection test results and comparative simulations on the first 10 metre prototype dipoles for the Large Hadron Collider

The first 10 metre long dipole prototypes made by European Industry within the framework of the R&D programme for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have been tested at CERN. As a part of the test programme, a series of quench protection tests have been carried out in order to qualify the basic protection scheme foreseen for the LHC dipoles (quench heaters and cold diodes). Results are presented on the quench heater performance, and on the maximum temperatures and voltages observed during quenches under the so-called “machine conditions”. Moreover, an update of the quench simulation package specially developed at CERN (QUABER 2) has been recently made. Details on this new version of QUABER are given. Simulation runs have been made specifically to validate the model with the results from the measurements on quench protection mentioned above