Database automation of accelerator operation

The Oak Ridge Isochronous Cyclotron (ORIC) is a variable energy, multiparticle accelerator that produces beams of energetic heavy ions which are used as probes to study the structure of the atomic nucleus. To accelerate and transmit a particular ion at a specified energy to an experimenter's apparatus, the electrical currents in up to 82 magnetic field producing coils must be established to accuracies of from 0.1 to 0.001 percent. Mechanical elements must also be positioned by means of motors or pneumatic drives. A mathematical model of this complex system provides a good approximation of operating parameters required to produce an ion beam. However, manual tuning of the system must be performed to optimize the beam quality. The database system was implemented as an on-line query and retrieval system running at a priority lower than the cyclotron real-time software. It was designed for matching beams recorded in the database with beams specified for experiments. The database is relational and permits searching on ranges of any subset of the eleven beam categorizing attributes. A beam file selected from the database is transmitted to the cyclotron general control software which handles the automatic slewing of power supply currents and motor positions to the file values, thereby replicating the desired parameters