Design, implementation and testing of a wire scanner prototype

A wire scanner is an electro-mechanical device which measures the transverse density profile of a particle beam. It consists on a rotating fork with a thin carbon wire attached to its endpoints. The wire intersects the beam in an intermittent manner. Minimizing the wire vibrations is important to improve the accuracy of the measurement. This work will focus on two points: the development of an optimal motion pattern for the fork to reduce the wire vibrations, and the design and ssembling of an experimental setup to test de behaviour of the system under those motion patterns. The setup will be a simplification of the real system. The main actuator (an electrical motor) will be replaced by a piezo-actuator with a lever arm which will transform the linear displacement of the actuator into rotations. The actuator will be driven with the designed motion patterns, and the resulting vibrations will be measured by means of two electronic readout systems based on a Wheatstone bridge