Radiation shielding study of WO3-ZnO-PbO-B2O3 glasses using Geant4 and Phys-X: A comparative study

This work aims to report the radiation shielding ability of WO3-ZnO-PbO-B2O3 glasses and to understand the effect of WO3 on the shielding behavior of this glass system. Geant4 code was applied to calculate the mass attenuation coefficient between 0.1218 and 1.458 MeV. The Phys-X software was used to validate the simulation results. Decrease in the transmission factor (TF) for the selected glasses with an increase in the thickness of the glass from 0.2 to 1 cm has been noticed and discussed. The maximum TF for the glass with composition of 20PbO-80B(2)O(3) occurred for 0.2 cm thickness and equals to 0.44 at 0.1218 MeV and 0.966 at 1.086 MeV. Whereas, the maximum TF for 10WO(3)-10ZnO-20PbO-60B(2)O(3) sample with a thickness of 0.2 cm varied between 0.256 and 0.95. The TF results emphasize the fact that the sample's power to attenuate the photons becomes weaker with the increase in the energy of the photon. The radiation protection efficiency (RPE) increases with the increase in the thickness of the glass and the amount of WO3. The replacement of 20 mol % of ZnO by 10 mol % of WO3 leads to the increase in the RPE from 8.83 to 12.03% at x = 0.4 cm, from 16.89 to 22.61% at x = 0.8 cm and from 20.64 to 27.42% at x = 1 cm. At 0.444 MeV, the linear attenuation coefficient (LAC) increases by 1.52 due to the increase in the density by 1.46, which indicated that if the density of the glass is doubled, the LAC almost doubles, and the WZPB7 glass with highest density attenuates more photons.

Automated summary

This study aims to investigate the radiation shielding ability of WO3-ZnO-PbO-B2O3 glasses and the impact of WO3 on the shielding behavior. The results show that the transmission factor decreases with the increase in glass thickness and energy of the photon, while the radiation protection efficiency increases with the thickness of the glass and the amount of WO3. The study suggests that the glass with the highest density attenuates more photons as the linear attenuation coefficient almost doubles when the density is doubled.