  Irradiation experiments (IE) are an essential step in the development of
High-Energy Physics (HEP) particle accelerators and detectors. They assess the
radiation hardness of materials used in HEP experimental devices by simulating,
in a short time, the common long-term degradation effects due to their
bombardment by high-energy particles. IEs are also used in other scientific and
industrial fields such as medicine (e.g., for cancer treatment, medical
imaging, etc.), space/avionics (e.g., for radiation testing of payload
equipment) as well as in industry (e.g., for food sterilization). Usually
carried out with ionizing radiation, these complex processes require highly
specialized infrastructures: the irradiation facilities. Currently, hundreds of
such facilities exist worldwide. To help develop best practices and promote
computer-assisted handling and management of IEs, we introduce IEDM, a new
OWL-based Irradiation Experiment Data Management ontology. This paper provides
an overview of the classes and properties of IEDM. Since one of the key design
choices for IEDM was to maximize the reuse of existing foundational ontologies
such as the Ontology of Scientific Experiments (EXPO), the Ontology of Units of
Measure (OM) and the Friend-of-a-Friend Ontology (FOAF), we discuss the
methodological issues of the integration of IEDM with these imported
ontologies. We illustrate the use of IEDM via an actual IE recently performed
at IRRAD, the CERN proton irradiation facility. Finally, we discuss other
motivations for this work, including the use of IEDM for the generation of user
interfaces for IE management, and their impact on our methodology.
