A study of mechanical properties of foil materials for the GEM detector proposed for the CMS muon system upgrade at LHC
The material characterization of the gaseous electron
multiplier (GEM) detectors is presented in this article;
mechanical tests were performed to examine the mechanical
performance of polyimide (Kapton) and GEM foil.
Bearing in mind the mechanical stresses imposed during
the assembly and subsequently during operation at Compact
Muon Solenoid (CMS). The detectors will run for
many years in the harsh radiation and environmental conditions
at the CMS. In view of this a series of the tensile
tests were performed by using different samples which
were prepared accordingly, i.e. a set of the samples was
exposed to neutron and another exposed to gamma radiation,
and then these were made dry and wet to assess
the effects of radiation and humidity on their tensile properties.
In this paper the experimental setup, testing procedures,
sampling and detailed results are presented. In
general, due to the radiation and environment variation
conditions the degradation of the GEM material is not significant
with respect to its toughness, but the Young’s
modulus was effected.