Strategy for fitting source strength and reconstruction procedure in radioactive particle tracking

The Radioactive Particle Tracking (RPT) technique is widely applied to study the dynamic properties of flows inside a reactor. Usually, a single radioactive particle that is neutrally buoyant with respect to the phase is used as a tracker. The particle moves inside a 3D volume of interest, and its positions are determined by an array of scintillation detectors, which count the incoming photons. The particle position coordinates are calculated by using a reconstruction procedure that solves a minimization problem between the measured counts and calibration data. Although previous studies have described the influence of specified factors on the RPT resolution and sensitivities, the question of how to choose an appropriate source strength and reconstruction procedure for the given RPT setup remains an unsolved problem. This work describes and applies the original strategy for fitting both the source strength and the sampling time interval to a specified RPT setup to guarantee a required accuracy of measurements. Additionally, the measurement accuracy of an RP1' setup can be significantly increased by changing the reconstruction procedure. The results of the simulations, based on the Monte Carlo approach, have demonstrated that the proposed strategy allows for the successful implementation of the As Low As Reasonably Achievable (ALARA) principle when designing the RN' setup. The limitations and drawbacks of the proposed procedure are also presented. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.