Analysis of the sPHENIX cooling water piping system

David Drysdale

Faculty: Russell Feder (Brookhaven National Laboratory), Shuang Tang

The new sPHENIX detector at Brookhaven National Laboratory is under construction and will focus on studying strongly interacting particles produced in heavy ion collisions in the RHIC particle accelerator. The impact that sPHENIX will bring to Brookhaven National Laboratory is that scientists and physicians will have a better understanding of the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP).

My SULI 2021 internship focused on the engineering of the sPHENIX cooling water system used to remove heat from detector electronics and high performance detector server racks mounted on the sPHENIX carriage superstructure.

I used the software package PipeFlow Expert to simulate and optimize the flow of water in the sPHENIX piping system, calculating pressure drop, flow rates and other hydraulic properties.

I also used the 3D CAD software package AutoDesk Fusion 360 to view detailed models of sPHENIX and used those models to develop simplified simulation models in PipeFlow Expert.

My accomplishments in this internship was that I learned to use the new engineering software packages. This helped me develop and grow a repertoire of engineering tools. To get a working model, we switched to using the pump model and selecting an ideal pump based on the pump curves. We knew the total flow rate needed based on the number of racks and flow rate at each rack. Based on that known flow rate we selected a pump that could provide the pressure-head needed to get water to all the racks.