Electronic Theses and Dissertations (Masters)

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/10539/38020

Browse

Browsing Electronic Theses and Dissertations (Masters) by Keyword "ATLAS experiment"

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    The development of a burn-in test station at Wits for the Phase-II upgrade of the Tile Calorimeter of the ATLAS experiment
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-07) Njara, Nkosiphendule; Mellado, Bruce
    The University of the Witwatersrand is responsible for producing over 1200 Low Voltage Power Supply (LVPS) bricks to power the on-detector electronics of the Tile Calorimeter (TileCal) of the ATLAS detector in preparation for the Phase II upgrade. The LVPS brick is a DC/DC switch-mode power supply module that steps down a 200 VDC input to a 10 VDC output. Before being sent to CERN for installation, the LVPS bricks must undergo a quality assurance test. To ensure that these electronic devices meet the necessary standards for high-quality and reliability, the University of the Witwatersrand employs a burn-in test station that subjects them to electronic tests at elevated temperatures and other stressful conditions. The burn-in test station comprises of different Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs), each responsible for various functions, and a PIC microcontroller needs to be programmed for each board to perform its respective functions. An assembler MPLABX IDE and a compiler (CCS) are used for programming the PIC microcontroller, and the Labview software is used as the control program for the burn-in test station. A simulation was used in Proteus software to test the firmware functionality before programming the hardware. Preliminary results of the current version (version 8.4.2) of the LVPS brick are discussed.