Affiliations 

  • 1 Physics Department, Faculty of Science, Alexandria University, Alexandria 21511, Egypt
  • 2 Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Isra University, Amman 11622, Jordan
  • 3 Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Al-Balqa Applied University, Al-Salt 19117, Jordan
  • 4 Department of Environmental Studies, Institute of Graduate Studies and Research, Alexandria University, Alexandria 21526, Egypt
  • 5 Basic Sciences Department, Faculty of Engineering, Pharos University in Alexandria, Alexandria 21526, Egypt
  • 6 Centre for Applied Physics and Radiation Technologies, School of Engineering and Technology, Sunway University, Bandar Sunway 47500, Selangor, Malaysia
  • 7 Department of Radiology, College of Applied Medical Sciences, Taif University, Taif 21944, Saudi Arabia
  • 8 Department of Clinical Laboratory Sciences, College of Applied Medical Sciences, Taif University, Taif 21944, Saudi Arabia
Materials (Basel), 2021 Jul 14;14(14).
PMID: 34300846 DOI: 10.3390/ma14143928

Abstract

This paper aims to study the radiation shielding characteristics and buildup factor of some types of granite in Egypt. The mass attenuation coefficient (MAC) for three types of granite (gandola, white halayeb, and red aswani) was experimentally determined, and the experimental results were validated by XCOM software. The relative deviation between the two methods does not exceed 3% in all discussed granite samples, which means that MAC calculated through the experimental and XCOM are in suitable agreement. The effective atomic number (Zeff) varies from 13.64 to 10.69, 13.68 to 10.59, and 13.45 and 10.66 for gandola, white halayeb, and red aswani, respectively. As well as the equivalent atomic number (Zeq) was calculated in a wide range of energy to deduce the exposure (EBF) and energy absorption (EABF) buildup factors for the studied granite materials. The linear attenuation coefficient (LAC), half-value layer (HVL), mean free path (MFP) were calculated at each investigated energy and showed that the most effective shielding ability at high energy was red aswani, while at low energy, the shielding ability was nearly constant for studied granites. The present study forms the first endeavor to obtain the radiation shielding properties of the studied materials to be used in practical applications.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.