A quench management system for testing superconducting magnets

A quench management system has been developed for the Fermilab Magnet Test Facility as part of the overall data acquisition and control system for testing superconducting accelerator magnets. The quench management system accepts a standard set of quench input signals such as magnet voltages and current, safety interlocks, and power supply status, which are multiplexed from several independent test stands. It also issues a standard set of output control signals that are used to activate the dump, the quench protection heater power supplies, and to control the magnet ramp down in the event of a quench. Triggers generated by the quench management system are used to save the logged quench data from both the fast and slow data acquisition instrumentation. The hardware architecture of the quench management system will be discussed along with analog quench detection, digital quench detection, quench logic, and the user interface for configuring and controlling this system.