Design and development of a coordination and protection system for the SPES project

The National Laboratories of Legnaro (LNL) are currently developing a project called Selective Production of Exotic Species (SPES), aimed at generating radioactive beams for nuclear physics experiments and medicine applications. The project involves a complex set of systems and machines that require close coordination to ensure the proper functioning of the relevant procedures and the integrity of the machines. This thesis describes the analysis and development of the coordination and protection system between two subsystems: the vacuum system and the coupling table system. The vacuum system controls several pumps distributed along the line and manages vacuum and venting operations. The Coupling Table manages the operations related to the correct placing of the target chamber to the beam line trunk. Given the frequent need for maintenance of the chamber, ensuring high reliability in coupling and decoupling operations is crucial. The design foresees that the two subsystems request permission before performing any operation. The handling of requests and acknowledgements was implemented through a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC). The communication with the control system of the whole facility is guaranteed by the adoption of an EPICS (Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System) communication layer based on the MODBUS protocol, which is also used to build the Graphical User Interface (GUI). Finally, automated testing of the software on all possible scenarios has been implemented by exploiting the PLC simulator and a custom python test utility.