CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a 27 km ring, buried to a depth of 100 meters, near the French-Swiss border in Geneva. This is the most powerful particle accelerator in the world. Very high energy protons circulating in a vacuum in beams spinning in the opposite direction will collide with each other to search for evidence of super symmetry, dark matter and the origin of mass of elementary particles.

These protons, accelerated to almost the speed of light and kept in circulation for hours, are guided by very powerful superconducting magnets. These protons, accelerated to almost the speed of light and kept in circulation for hours, are guided by very powerful superconducting magnets.

In the LHC, these techniques that use the properties of nitrogen and helium were designed by Air Liquide Advanced Technologies.

Boccard’s service on this project was to build the 530 piping modules that make up the Large Hadron Collider ring . This work was carried out in our workshop in Portugal, certified ALTAL and ISO 9001. These stainless steel modules were welded with qualified welding processes at -192 C.

After radiographing 100% of the welds, these modules were subjected to pneumatic tests, thermal shock and helium leakage tests and, finally, vacuum behavior tests.