Investigation of Strontium/Barium Silicate Glasses through MCNPX and Phy-X for X-rays Shielding

Abstract

We study the radiation shielding properties 40X-60SiO₂ glasses, where X represents either SrO or BaO, while using MCNPX simulations code and Phy-X software by assessing radiation shielding parameters such as mass and linear attenuation shielding parameters, mean free path, half-value layer, effective atomic number, and tenth value layer in the photon energy ranging from 0.001 to 15 MeV. The result obtained for the mass attenuation coefficient is used to determine the half-value layer (HVL), mean free path (MFP), tenth value layer (TVL), and effective atomic number (Z_eff). Both mass attenuation coefficient results obtained for MCNPX and Phy-X demonstrate a high degree of agreement with each other. The half-value layer for 40BaO-60SiO₂ is found to be increasing from 0.004 cm to 5.01 cm with the increasing the photon energy from 0.015 to 15 MeV, while for 40SrO-60SiO₂ it increases from 0.01 cm to 7.19 cm in the same energy range. Similarly, the mean free path for 40BaO-60SiO₂ increases from 0.006 cm to 7.23 cm with increasing energy from 0.015 to 15 MeV while it increases from 0.02 cm to 10.37 cm for 40SrO-60SiO₂ in the same energy range. The lower half-value layer and mean free path for 40BaO-60SiO₂ than for 40SrO-60SiO₂ in the entire energy range is attributed to the higher density of Ba in 40BaO-60SiO₂ than that of Sr in the 40SrO-60SiO₂. The higher mass- and linear-attenuation coefficients and lower half- and tenth-value layers and mean free path for 40BaO-60SiO₂ (with higher density) than for 40SrO-60SiO₂ (with lower density) suggest that 40BaO-60SiO₂ is more efficient in shielding the X-rays than the 40SrO-60SiO₂. Therefore, it is inferred that 40BaO-60SiO₂ glass can be used as a potential shielding material for medical applications such as in X-ray rooms and radiation therapy.