Harwell's Particle Accelerator transformed by Carroll & Meynell

As part of a major project to allow the ISIS Synchrotron Particle Accelerator at Harwell’s Rutherford Laboratory to move forward into the 21^st century with new and innovative research projects, the power supply for the magnets that contain the proton beams and accelerate them to 84% of the speed of light, is being up-graded.

As part of this upgrade Carroll & Meynell Transformers was asked to supply a 1200kVA single phase transformer to a very exacting specification.  The customer specified a particular voltage per turn ratio in order to meet their exact requirements electrically and imposed a height restriction for access purposes.  Both of these factors combined to make very specific demands on the design of the thermal management of the unit, terms of conductor size and cooling ducts.

This challenging project required the Carroll & Meynell design and engineering team to revise and upgrade the transformer design methods to achieve an operating design that met the standards. It also required the development of new tooling and production engineering methods to perform the construction and assembly of the unit.  The engineering developments for this project have expanded the capability of Carroll & Meynell to manufacture dry type transformer units up to 2000kVA.