Autonomous monitoring of control hardware to predict off-normal conditions using NIF automatic alignment systems

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is a high power laser system capable of supporting high-energy-density experimentation as a user facility for the next 30 years. In order to maximize the facility availability, preventive maintenance enhancements are being introduced into the system. An example of such an enhancement is a camera-based health monitoring system, integrated into the automated alignment system, which provides an opportunity to monitor trends in measurements such as average beam intensity, size of the beam, and pixel saturation. The monitoring system will generate alerts based on observed trends in measurements to allow scheduled pro-active maintenance before routine off-normal detection stops system operations requiring unscheduled intervention.

► An automatic alignment system was developed to process images of the laser beams. ► System uses processing to adjust a series of control loops until alignment criteria are satisfied. ► Monitored conditions are compared against nominal values with an off-normal alert. ► Automated health monitoring system trends off-normals with a large image history.