Drafting an Electrostatic Charge Control Plan for a Large Scale Scientific Instrument: Guidelines and a Case Study

Abstract

Large-scale scientific instruments strongly support top-level research all around the world. Besides their intrinsic merits, they often play a valuable role as pathfinders for developing and testing instrumentation and as training grounds for young researchers. Strategies and roadmaps for these facilities have become a priority for a number of private and public funding organizations. Despite the large amount of mature work done in the industrial arena, it is difficult to find documents providing clear and concise orientation on how to prevent or minimize the damage caused by electrostatic discharges (ESD) in research infrastructure. This paper aims to gather all this information to develop a static charge control plan for a large-scale scientific facility. The specific case of the static charge control plan for the installation of CTA-LST telescopes is added as an example and verification of the actual applicability of the measures proposed in this document, providing static charge in human body monitoring measurements. Specific tests performed on equipment with ESD sensitive components are also described, which helped to assess any possible damage.