Vacuum system of the Space Plasma Environment Research Facility

Abstract

The Space Plasma Environment Research Facility (SPERF) being built in Harbin provides a laboratory platform for research on space plasma. The vacuum system, as an essential subsystem, is designed to set up an experimental vacuum environment for plasma experiments. However, the SPERF with a large volume of 2.315×105 l contains a lot of outgassing loads and hundreds of interfaces, which poses a big challenge for high vacuum acquisition. In addition, the plasma experiments on the SPERF require a pure background vacuum environment. In this study, the vacuum system is designed to meet the experimental requirements for the vacuum environment, with emphasis on the pumping system configuration and the vacuum acquisition process. Benefiting from the great construction techniques and advanced configuration of the pumping system, the target ultimate pressure of 1.0×10−4 Pa in the chamber can be obtained within 24 h and the leakage rate of the vacuum chamber is 30% smaller than the target value. It is significant that the high vacuum environment is efficiently achieved in such a big chamber, and the design may throw some new light on constructing other similar large-scale vacuum systems.