Opacity considerations for an experiment to measure radiation flow in an inhomogeneous binary mixture

An experiment is briefly described which measures radiation flow through a sample manufactured by seeding grains of high-Z material in a low-Z, low density host material. The factors that influence the opacity of such a mixture highlight the characterisation of the sample that is pre-requisite to interpretation of the experiment. Understanding the dependence of the opacity on the distribution of the sizes of the grains is addressed by means of a simple model. It is concluded that the model will accurately predict the photon mean free path controlling radiation flow in the heated material if the initial distribution is known. Crown Copyright (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.