2011 - Laboratoire National des Champs Magnétiques Intenses ...

THE LNCMI USER FACILITY 2011Local contactWhen the applicant is informed of the acceptance of his proposal, and of the number of pulses / shifts scheduledfor the experiment, he/she is at the same time informed of the name of his local contact in charge of facilitatinghis work at the LNCMI. The local contact is a research scientist or a engineer of the laboratory. If an applicantcannot identify a local contact, the laboratory management will appoint a scientist that the user can contact inorder to define with him the conditions for the organization of the experimental work.Programming the period of experimentThe schedule for utilization of the magnets is drawn up several weeks in advance and is made official at thebeginning of every month. Visitors are therefore strongly urged to get in touch with their local contact, toreserve as quickly as possible the most suitable period for carrying out their experiment at the LNCMI.Magnet time planningThe magnets operate on a schedule, displayed monthly, taking into account the availability of staff, magnetsand instrumentation. For the static field facility, the installation operates outside normal working hours withprofessional operators. This allows the magnets to be operated 20 hours per day during the week and 11 hoursper day during weekends and bank holidays. In order to reduce the electricity costs of the laboratory a newcontract which is effective since November 2011 has been signed with the electricity supplier. As a consequence,the resistive magnet site is shut down yearly for three months from December to February when the electricity ismost expensive. On the other hand, the access to these magnets is now possible during the summer months upfrom 2012. Due to the contract change the number of weeks where the 10 and 20 MW magnets were accessible wasreduced in 2011. The winter shutdown is used for maintenance, technical interventions, upgrading and testing.Notice that the new contract has no influence on the pulsed and superconducting activity. The evolution of thenumber of weeks the resistive magnets are available can be seen in figure 1.FIG. 1.Number of weeks of availability of the 10 and 20 MW resistive magnets at LNCMI-G.Projects submitted during the last yearsAn average of 182 projects have been submitted annually over the last three years, of which there were 75 projectsper year submitted for a 20 MW magnet, 31 projects per year submitted for a 10 MW magnet, 61 projects peryear submitted for a pulsed magnet and 16 external projects per year submitted for a superconducting magnet(see figure 2). The former increasing of the number of applications for 20 MW magnets has come to saturationover the last three years; these magnets are indeed totally occupied for all periods available. The success of thesemagnets is certainly linked both to the possibility of different bore diameters of the 20 MW magnets, and partlyto the increase of the field obtained (35 T in a 34 mm bore, 20 T in a 160 mm bore, 29 T and since November2011 30 T in a 50 mm bore).Projects carried out in 2011In 2011 the access to the Grenoble resistive magnets was possible during 37.5 weeks in which the laboratory hasprovided 2641 hours of magnet time to its users. More than 80% (2189 h which is more than 200 h more than in2