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Description
The CAOS facility in Perugia is a dedicated laboratory for the testing and validation of mechanical and optical systems for the Einstein Telescope (ET). A key component of the facility is a seismically isolated Fabry–Perot cavity, designed to support advanced interferometric studies.
Within this framework, two 15-meter-high stainless steel towers have been installed. The towers are designed to operate under high-vacuum conditions (~10⁻⁷ mbar), imposing stringent requirements on materials, sealing, and contamination control. Building upon the heritage of the Virgo detector tower design, the structures have undergone extensive refinement through Finite Element (FE) analysis. These studies enabled optimization of the mechanical configuration under both static and dynamic loading conditions.
The design process focused on minimizing stress concentrations while ensuring adequate separation of mechanical resonance frequencies from operational bandwidths. Additional investigations addressed critical aspects such as airflow management to reduce mirror contamination during maintenance operations, the development of dedicated integration tools and procedures for lateral payload insertion at the tower base, and the assessment of Non-Evaporable Getter (NEG) pump performance within Super Attenuator environments.
This contribution presents the adopted mechanical solutions for the CAOS towers and provides an overview of the methodologies employed throughout the design and optimization phases.