Tenderers were invited to submit an offer for Research and Development (R&D) service contracts for Phase 2, with the aim to develop a Detailed Engineering Design of the MQYY magnet and its associated tooling based on the results from Phase 1. This award notice refers to the award of contracts in Phase 2 of the PCP.

Background:

To extend its discovery potential, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will need a major upgrade in the 2020s to increase its luminosity. The integrated luminosity goal is a ten-fold increase of the nominal design value. As a highly complex and optimized machine, such an upgrade must be carefully studied. The necessary developments will require many years of prototyping, testing and implementing.

The new configuration of the machine, HL LHC, among other things, will be based on a new generation of magnets in the 2 high-luminosity interaction regions, aiming to provide a stronger beam focusing. All of these magnets constitute a significant technical challenge at the edge and beyond the actual state-of-the-art technology. The technical challenges range from materials (i.e. NbTi and Nb3Sn superconductor cables with unprecedented current carrying density), process (i.e. 3D printing to precision manufacture magnet subcomponents), design techniques (i.e. extensive use of prototype and testing to retro-fit the design production).

This Pre-Commercial procurement focuses on the realization of R&D services to develop MQYY superconducting quadrupole magnets that will be used in the Q4 Cryoassembly on the HL-LHC project. The MQYY will be part of the Insertion Region (IR) magnets delivering the beams to the CMS and ATLAS experiments.