Mass attenuation coefficients of composite materials by Geant4, XCOM and experimental data: comparative study

Abstract

The main goal of this present study is focused on testing the applicability of Geant4 electromagnetic models for studying mass attenuations coefficients for different types of composite materials at 59.5, 80, 356, 661.6, 1173.2 and 1332.5 keV photon energies. The simulated results of mass attenuation coefficients were compared with the experimental and theoretical XCOM data for the same samples and a good agreement has been observed. The results indicate that this process can be followed to determine the data on the attenuation of gamma rays with the several energies in different materials. The modeling for photon interaction parameters was standard for any type of composite samples. The Geant4 code can be utilized for gamma ray attenuation coefficients for the sample at different energies, which may sometimes be impractical by experiment investigation.

Keywords:

• composite materials
• mass attenuation coefficient
• Monte Carlo simulations
• Geant4

Acknowledgements

One author (M. E. Medhat) would like to thank all members of the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) during hosting my postdoctoral fellowships presented by Chinese Academy of Science (CAS), China. This work was supported by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Fellowships for Young International Scientists.