ENGINEERING FOR PARTICLE PHYSICS
Electronics and mechanical engineering facilities and capabilities at CIEMAT. Our work is performed in close collaboration with the "Scientific Instrumentation Division" and the "Unidad de Fabricación y Apoyo de I+D"
In the following sections we detail the capabilities of both groups and we reference some of the activities that have happened lately in our group.
Several examples of the mechanical or electronics designs performed by this group can be found here:
CIEMAT ENGINEERING FOR PARTICLE PHYSICS CONTRIBUTIONS
In adition, some of them have been made public and can be accessed through the CIEMAT-OHL platform at:
Both in the fields of mechanical and electronics engineering, our group has a long tradition and experience in designing and producing custom systems that comply with the strict and specific requirements of the particle physics experiments. This includes experiments in the space, where we have contributed with mechanics and electronic designs, or in underground areas, with several environmental challenges (cryogenic temperatures, radiation, magnetic fields, etc).
One of our major assets is our End to End project management (E2E) which insures that our project goals are accomplished from the start to the end. We participate in the full chain from design to fabrication, installation adn commissioning, insuring the optimal results of our systems on the field.
Developing complex structures, with very tight tolerances or planarity, that work under magnetic field, under very large thermal cycles variations or subject to large radiation doses, etc. are, among others, the challenges that have to be faced in the design and development of the mechanical structures that support the different particle physics experiments we have worked on. Our team of engineers has good experience in dealing with them.
On the electronics engineering the activity takes place in very close collaboration with the Scientific Instrumentation Division and the "Unidad de Fabricación y Apoyo de I+D (Talleres Generales)" from CIEMAT.
The requirements for developing electronic systems that operate in particle physics experments are also extremely challenging. Radiation tolerance is usually one of the main requirements, but low noise, high speed, better timing and in general, very high performance, is a must in the majority of the applications. We have experience both in analog and digital electronic systems that range from the very front end for signal shaping and amplification to the design of specialized digital electronics, data acquisition and trigger, and the implementation of complex logic in the latest generation programmable devices and with the latests high speed interfaces.