[en] 14 UD Pelletron accelerator facility at Mumbai has been operational since 1989. The project MEHIA (Medium Energy Heavy Ion Accelerator) started in 1982 and was formally inaugurated on 30th December 1988. Since then the accelerator has been working round the clock. Improvement in accelerator performance and operational experience are described. (author)

[en] One of the requirements for a high power ion source is a high voltage, high current DC generator. The high voltage, high current generator, DISCATRON, presently under development in our laboratory is a rotating disc type electrostatic generator similar in design to the one reported by A. Isoya et al. (1985). It is compact and rugged electrostatic DC generator based on the principle of induction charging by pellet chains used in the pelletron accelerator. It is, basically, a constant-current device with little stored energy, so that, in case of a breakdown, damage to the equipment connected to the output terminals is minimal. Since the present generator is only a proto-type, meant for a study of the practical difficulties that would be encountered in its manufacture, the output voltage and current specified has been kept quite modest viz., 300 kV at 500 μA, maximum. Some results of the preliminary tests carried out with this generator are described. (author). 4 figs

[en] The pelletron accelerator facility described here is based on a 14 million volt tandem electrostatic accelerator capable of providing beams of accelerated nuclear particles such as protons, alpha particles and different types of heavy ions at energies sufficiently high for conducting nuclear research in a variety of new and interesting regimes

[en] The 14 UD Pelletron accelerator has been in operation since 1989. It is a tandem accelerator, where negative ions are injected at maximum -300 kV and after the stripper in the terminal, positive ions achieve a maximum energy of 14(q+ I) MeV. The beam is transported from the ion source up to the target area with the help of various beam optic devices like quadrupoles and steerers. In this process the magnetic field of the focusing and steering magnets is adjusted with the help of voltage or current power supplies. At present the beam tuning process is operator driven. This paper describes a design concept of a CAMAC based beam tuner card that is implemented using an FPGA and which is under development at the Pelletron accelerator facility

[en] The Pelletron Accelerator Control System includes a PC, Interface card, CAMAC crate controller and various I/O modules. Various equipment/ instruments used in the Accelerator are monitored/controlled through CAMAC bus, which in turn is interfaced with the PC via PC-interface card. Presently the PC interface bus used is ISA, which has become obsolete and many modern mother boards do not support it. This paper describes the design and development of PCI bus interface card for CAMAC crate controller

[en] 14UD Pelletron Accelerator Facility has been operational since 1989. The potential grading in the accelerator column and tube is achieved by corona points. At present column and tube corona points are replaced by resistance. The resistance per module in the column and tube are 36 GΩ and 33 GΩ respectively

[en] The large particle accelerators machines like pelletron accelerator at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (T.I.F.R) have several levels of controls with operators responsible for overall global control decisions and closed loop feedback controllers for relatively small subsystems of the machines. As the accelerator machines are becoming more complicated and the requirements more stringent, there is a need to provide the operators with an artificial intelligence (AI) system to aid in the tuning the machine and in failure diagnosis. There are few major areas in the pelletron operation, which can be done more efficiently using AI systems approach so that useful beam is available for much more time: 1) Accelerator Conditioning, 2) Accelerator Tuning, and 3) Maintaining the Tune beams. The feasibility study for using expert system for above areas and also for safety evaluation of the various subsystems is carried out. (author). 10 refs., 4 figs

[en] Full text: The Pelletron Accelerator Facility has been set up under a collaborative project of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research at the campus of TIFR in South Mumbai. The facility is based on a 14 million volt tandem electrostatic accelerator capable of providing beams of accelerated nuclear particles such as protons, alpha particles and different types of heavy ions at energies sufficiently high for conducting nuclear research in a variety of new and interesting regimes. The accelerator has been in operation for last sixteen years progressively with increased efficiency. An ion source test bench has been set up for development of various ion beams. The technique of multi -element cathode samples has been indigenously developed to extract different ion species from the same cathode and work on multi-cathode SNICS ion source is at advanced stage of completion. The original NEC column structure had corona grading for potential distribution, which has been converted to a resistance grading system. As a result, the performance of the accelerator has improved significantly. The accelerator has a high uptime and routinely operated on higher side at 13 MV and on lower side at 2.5 MV. An offset quadrupole has been indigenously developed to select a particular charge state after the terminal stripper. The technology demonstration of this quadrupole was recently carried out with ²⁸Si ion beam at 15 MeV. A double drift tube harmonic buncher, operating at 10 and 20 MHz, has been developed indigenously to pulse the dc beam to 1-2 ns pulse width. The buncher has been in operation for last several years. One of the milestones of our facility is the development of Technology of lead-plated superconducting quarter - wave resonators as a part of Linac booster for increasing the energies of heavy ion beams available from the Pelletron Accelerator. On 22 September, 2002 first phase of Linac consisting of three modules with four resonators each was commissioned. The ²⁸Si beam at 85 MeV from the Pelletron Accelerator was injected into Superconducting Linac and beam was further accelerated to 137 MeV. Subsequent to this event, this part of the Linac has run continuously for a number of weeks and during this period Linac controls were tuned so as to get the optimum performance for a few nuclear physics experiments. The work on the accelerating modules for Phase II of the Linac is continuing. Various beam line components, power supplies, control centers, cryogenic lines, RF amplifiers and cryostats have been developed indigenously. The construction of the new beam hall for utilizing Pelletron-Linac facility is completed. A 6 MV Folded Tandem Ion Accelerator has been developed indigenously at Nuclear Physics Division, BARC. The accelerator is housed inside an old pressure vessel which was used for Van-de- Graaff accelerator. The design of high voltage column was a challenging task and after a series of experiments on dummy column posts, the column was constructed by 1998 and high voltage test was performed. The charging system, rotating shaft, 180 degree bending magnet, power supplies for various magnets, Accelerator control system, Ion source etc have been developed indigenously. This facility was operated with N₂ + CO₂ at low terminal voltage and currently high voltage trials with SF₆ are underway. An alternate positive ion injector to superconducting Linac, comprising of an ECR source followed by a Radio Frequency quadrupole and superconducting Niobium cavities will be developed for further enhancing the available beam species and energies. The proposed facility will enable the study of reactions above the coulomb barrier even for heavier systems. At present we are concentrating in development of technology of Radio Frequency quadrupole and Nb sputtering. (author)

[en] The charged particle accelerators have played a key role in the field of basic sciences. Whether it is physics, chemistry, biology or material science, all of them have gone through radical transformations. All this has been possible because of the accelerator's beams which have been used to unfold the secrets of nature. Same is true in case of applied sciences too. In the field of Medicine, the outdated methods of diagnosis are slowly getting replaced by accelerator - produced radioisotopes. The development of accelerators in BARC can be categorized in two ways, i.e., heavy ion accelerators and electron accelerators. The heavy ions accelerators at sufficiently high energies are used in basic science for conducting nuclear research in a variety of new and interesting regimes. The utilization of accelerator for basic sciences is about 70% and rest for industrial usages and application. The electron accelerators have tremendous applications in industries. We have taken up various application programs using these facilities. However, in recent days there is a large demand for high energy, high current accelerator due to the concept of energy amplification using an accelerator Driven System. In this talk, I will discuss in detail about accelerator program at Ion Accelerator Development Division, BARC. (author)

[en] The Pelletron Accelerator Control system is based on CAMAC Controller, which is controlled by a PC. All the accelerator parameters are monitored/ controlled via CAMAC bus, which in turn is interfaced with PC via PCI Interface card. The CAMAC Controller with an FPGA is a flexible, portable and re-configurable system. With the FPGA, hardware design is simplified and design simulation is possible. This reduces the overall project implementation time and also the cost involved. This paper presents the implementation of CAMAC logic on FPGA and it's advantages over conventional CAMAC Controllers. (author)