Extensive theoretical study of gamma-ray shielding parameters using epoxy resin-metal chloride mixtures

Abstract

Gamma-ray detection and studying its interactions with matter is very important and serves in many fields of research. Besides, investigation of new shielding materials against gamma-ray will provide a lot of solutions for several problems accompanied by the presence of radiation sources in wide areas of applications, such as industry, medicine, agriculture, research laboratories, and nuclear power plants. In the present work, different gamma-ray attenuation parameters will be calculated theoretically using different metal chlorides mixed with epoxy resin polymers at different weight ratios. These attenuation parameters were calculated in a wide energy range started from 0.05 up to 3 MeV. This wide energy range covers almost the most known radionuclide gamma-ray energies. The obtained results were compared with pure epoxy resin polymer to show how well the modification of polymer properties was when mixed with other materials. Also, all mixture's attenuation parameters results were compared with lead metal results to check its validity as a gamma-ray shielding material. The obtained results found to be promising and the presented materials can be used instead of lead metal as an effective material in radiation protection.

Keywords

• epoxy resin polymer
• metal chlorides
• gamma-ray detection
• mass attenuation coefficient
• radiation protection