PSL & DUNE Collaboration Members More DUNE Information
PSL, and three other universities were awarded a $1.6 million grant from the National Science Foundation to improve the winding process for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) Anode Plane Assembly (APA). PSL has built four APAs for the ProtoDUNE detector at CERN in Switzerland while other APAs were built by Daresbury Laboratory in the U.K.
The winder winds 24 kilometers (or 15 miles) of thin copper beryllium wire around a frame that is 6 meters (20 ft.) by 2 meters (6 feet). There are four layers of wire: the bottom and top layers are wound from one end of the frame to the other, the middle two layers are wound in a diagonal pattern. Winding is very difficult and time consuming, and with 150 APAs to be built for DUNE, it is vital to find efficiencies. This grant enables PSL, and its partner APA factories to further optimize the APA construction and winding process.
The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is a leading-edge, international experiment for neutrino science and proton decay studies. Discoveries over the past half-century have put neutrinos, the most abundant matter particles in the universe, in the spotlight for further research into several fundamental questions about the nature of matter and the evolution of the universe — questions that DUNE will seek to answer.
Credit: Fermilab