The Space Plasma Environment Research Facility (SPERF) is a ground simulation user facility for studying the space plasma physical processes. This study presents the design and construction of a vacuum control system for the SPERF to set up an appropriate vacuum environment for plasma experiments, including the terrestrial space and near space vacuum control systems. Based on the requirements of remote automation, distributed control, centralized management, high reliability, expansibility, and safety, the architecture of the vacuum control system has been divided into three levels. Among these, the local level is the most essential part of the control system, which adopts the programmable logical controller (PLC) with Siemens S7-1500 CPU as the core. The PLC supports multiple communication protocols and can accurately control and monitor the actuators in the process of establishing a vacuum environment. Furthermore, it has the ability to communicate and interact with remote upper computers and the central control system through the supervisory control and data acquisition (scada) software developed based on iFix. Based on the architecture of the vacuum control system, the control process for establishing the vacuum environment, including the ultimate vacuum and experimental vacuum, was designed. It is noteworthy that in experimental vacuum acquisition, the injection of working fluid gas is controlled directly by the central control system, considering the different requirements of the terrestrial space and near space systems for the experimental working pressure and flexibility of the experimental vacuum control. The vacuum control system designed in this study provides technical support for the SPERF to perform the plasma experiments successfully. In addition, it offers reference and insights for the design of vacuum control systems in similar large-scale plasma simulation facilities.

The Space Plasma Environment Research Facility (SPERF) is a ground-simulation facility, which is under construction, for studying space plasma. It includes a terrestrial space plasma environment simulation system (T-S system) and near-space plasma environment simulation system (N-S system). Plasma experiments performed on the SPERF require the functional cooperation of each subsystem. Therefore, the Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) was selected as the middleware in the engineering phase. Currently, the architecture of a vacuum-centralized control system is almost complete, and it is in the process of debugging. The application of EPICS in the SPERF vacuum-centralized control system has laid a structural foundation for the integration of other control systems and provides a test bed. In this study, we describe the implementation of EPICS for the SPERF vacuum-centralized control system, a procedure from hardware drivers realizing operation panels.

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.