Bon voyage to the hadronic calorimeter



It was a grand entourage for the first half of the CMS hadronic forward calorimeter (HF) that was escorted to Cessy, France by the police on 11 July.

The impressive trailer carrying the 7-m-long and 4-m-wide element was pushed and pulled by two specially designed trucks. It took the 64-m-long convoy around 5 hours to travel the 15 km to its final destination.

The days leading up to this operation involved intensive checks to the balance and pressure of the hydraulic system of the trailer's wheels. As one side of the HF is slightly heavier than the other, it is crucial to take this into account when transporting such a massive object (each half of the HF weighs 260 tonnes). However, once these checks were complete, the transport was safely underway.

The second half of the HF also received a police escort on 18 July as it made its way to the assembly hall at Point 5. The HF will be the first major detector to be lowered into the CMS cavern via the gantry crane in the coming months.