MIKE: a new computational tool for investigating radiation, optical and physical properties of prototyped shielding materials. (8th July 2021) - Hussein, K.I.
Abstract: The development of new, advanced shielding materials has attracted great interest among scientists and engineers. Recently, various shielding materials have been developed, which could replace the toxic, heavy, and costly conventional shielding materials. In this paper, we present our new computational software, MIKE, to assist researchers in the process of calculating and analyzing different radiation shielding parameters, such as the linear attenuation coefficient, mass attenuation coefficient, and half-value layer. The shielding parameter equations were coded using MATLAB. Additionally, the computational tool can be used to calculate the physical and optical properties of the selected composition, such as the average molar weight, molar volume, and molar electronic polarizability. Moreover, this tool allows the user to analyze the shielding parameters and the transmission factors for a selected material against a wide range of ionizing radiation energies. The newly developed computational software has been compared with existing radiation-shielding codes, including Phy-X/PSD and WinXcom, in addition to the available experimental data in the literature. The computed values produced using the MIKE software show good agreement with values calculated using the available competitor software programs (WinXcom, Phy-X/PSD, and the Monte Carlo method) with percentage differences of less than 0.2%. Our user-friendly computational software could help researchers evaluate whether various shielding materials meet the requirements of radiation applications, such as diagnostic and therapy applications including mammography, general radiography, computed tomography (CT), nuclear medicine, and high-energy photons used in radiotherapy applications.