Technical Note

Energy and chemical composition dependence ofmass attenuation coefficients of building

materials

Charanjeet Singh, Tejbir Singh, Ashok Kumar,Gurmel S. Mudahar*

Department of Physics, Punjabi University, Patiala, 147002, India

Received 28 January 2004; accepted 31 January 2004

Abstract

Total and partial mass attenuation coefficients of different building materials (glass, con-crete, marble, flyash, cement and lime) have been computed over a wide energy range of 10keV to 100 GeV. For the total mass attenuation coefficient, �total a significant variation is

observed in low and high energy regions whereas there is no notable change in �total in theintermediate region. The results of �total have been discussed on the basis of obtainedattenuation coefficients of different partial photon interaction processes.

# 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

With the increasing use of radioactive isotopes in many fields such as industrial,medical and agricultural, etc. it becomes necessary to study the different parametersrelated to the passage of gamma radiation through a material. Attenuation coeffi-cient is an important parameter for study of interaction of radiation with matterthat gives us the fraction of energy scattered or absorbed.

Different workers have calculated experimentally and theoretically the attenuationcoefficients in different categories such as Singh and Mudahar (1992) in variouscomposite materials, Singh et al. (1993) in HCO materials, Singh et al. (2002b) inglasses, Singh et al. (2002a) in biological materials, etc. The gamma ray attenuation

Annals of Nuclear Energy 31 (2004) 1199–1205

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* Corresponding author.

E-mail address: dr_gurmel@hotmail.com (G.S. Mudahar).

studies in building materials are of wide interest but a very limited work is availablein literature this direction. Recently Akkurt et al. (2004) have conducted attenuationcoefficient studies in barite, marble and limra. Similarly Bashter (1997) has alsoundertaken the attenuation coefficient studies for different types of concretes.Recently Alam et al. (2001) has obtained the attenuation coefficients for buildingmaterials of Bangladesh.

Considering the need of present day an attempt has been made to study the totaland partial mass attenuation coefficients of building materials to fill the gap inavailable literature and to give information about the radiation interactions in suchmaterials.

2. Calculation work

In the present investigations the different building materials are glass, concrete,marble, flyash, cement and lime. Their chemical compositions are given in Table 1.

The chemical compositions of these building materials were taken from theliterature in the form of reports (Pratt and Onabolu, 1992) and research paper(Bashter, 1997)

The attenuation coefficient values were computed with the help of a state-of-the-art computer program due to Berger and Hubbell (1987) named XCOM: Photoncross section on a personal computer. From the facility of XCOM program thepartial attenuation coefficients of photoelectric absorption, Compton scattering andpair production were calculated alongwith the total mass attenuation coefficients ofbuilding materials.

Table 1

Chemical composition of building materials by weight

Element

Glass Concrete Marble Flyash Cement Lime

H

– 0.009 – – – –

B

0.040 – – – – –

C

– 0.001 0.120 – – 0.003

O

0.538 0.537 0.518 0.424 0.370 0.292

Na

0.016 0.005 – 0.016 – –

Mg

– 0.001 0.103 0.035 0.004 0.004

Al

0.013 0.013 – 0.099 0.209 –

Si

0.376 0.367 0.036 0.175 0.021 0.002

P

– – – 0.004 – –

S

– 0.001 – – – –

K

0.018 0.003 – – – –

Ca

– 0.056 0.218 0.191 0.279 0.699

Ti

– – – 0.009 – –

Fe

– 0.006 0.006 0.043 0.117 –

1200 C. Singh et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 31 (2004) 1199–1205

3. Results and discussion

The obtained values of total and partial mass attenuation coefficients are shownagainst photon energy in the form of graphs which are discussed on the basis of theirchemical composition in the following paragraphs.

In Fig. 1, the variation of total mass attenuation coefficient, �total with energy isshown for the chosen building materials in a wide energy range of 10 keV to 100GeV. It is observed that �total of each building material decreases sharply in the lowenergy region, then becomes constant in the medium energy region and there isincrease in �total with further increase in energy. This is all due to Z-dependence ofdifferent photon interaction processes in different energy regions.

So far as the effect of chemical composition of building materials of �total, it isseen that there is significant variation in value of �total in low energy region, i.e. upto 100 keV. Further there is negligible variation �total from 100 keV to 3 MeV. Afterthis energy there is again variation in �total of the chosen building materials. The

Fig. 1. Variation of mass attenuation coefficient for total interaction process with energy for different

building materials.

C. Singh et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 31 (2004) 1199–1205 1201

behavior of curves of Fig. 1 has been explained on the basis of partial massattenuation attenuations of building materials.

Fig. 2 gives the variation of �photo with energy for different building materials.From the graph it is clear that there is significant variation in �photo with chemicalcomposition. This can be explained due to Z-dependence of photoelectric processwhich is Z4�5 because in this low energy region photoelectric absorption is dominantinteraction process. It explains the behavior of �total in low energy region. In thisregion the values of �total in Fig. 1 are mainly due to �photo.

The variation of �Comp with energy for different building materials is shown inFig. 3. From this figure it is seen that there is no significant variation in value of�Comp for the chosen building materials. This is because of the reason that in thismedium energy region the Compton interaction process is the dominant processwhich varies linearly with Z. This explains the behavior of middle portion in Fig. 1,i.e. from 100 keV to 3 MeV, the value of �total is constant for all the buildingmaterials for a particular value of energy.

Fig. 2. Variation of mass attenuation coefficient for photoelectric absorption with energy for different

building materials.

1202 C. Singh et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 31 (2004) 1199–1205

Similarly Fig. 4 gives the variation of with �pp energy for different buildingmaterials. From this graph it is observed that there is significant variation in �pp ofbuilding materials after 3 MeV. This is again due to Z2 dependence of pair produc-tion interaction process which becomes important interaction process in high energyregion. From this we can also explain the behavior of �total in Fig. 1 in the highenergy region, i.e. beyond 3 MeV. Hence there is appreciable variation in value of�total in this energy region.

4. Conclusions

From the present results, it is concluded that the total mass attenuation coefficientvaries in low energy and high energy regions whereas there is no change in �total inthe medium energy region of 100 keV to 3 MeV for the chosen Building materials. In

Fig. 3. Variation of mass attenuation coefficient for Compton scattering with energy for different building

materials.

C. Singh et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 31 (2004) 1199–1205 1203

the medium energy region the value of �total is same for all the building materials forthe fixed value of energy.

References

Akkurt, S., Kilincarslan, C., Basyigit, 2004. The photon attenuation coefficients of barite, marble and

limra. Annals of Nuclear Energy 31, 577.

Alam, M.N., Miah, M.H., Chowdhury, M.I., Kamal, M., Ghose, S., Rahman, Runi, 2001. Attenuation

coefficients of soils and some building materials of Bangladesh in the energy range 276–1332 keV. Appl.

Radiat. Isot. 54, 973.

Bashter, I.I., 1997. Calculation of radiation attenuation coefficients for shielding concretes. Ann. Nucl.

Energy 24, 1389.

Berger, M.J., Hubbell, J.H., 1987. N B S I R87-3597: Photon Cross Sections on A Personal Computer.

National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD.

Fig. 4. Variation of mass attenuation coefficient for pair production with energy for different building

materials.

1204 C. Singh et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 31 (2004) 1199–1205

Pratt, P.L., Onabolu, O.A., 1992. Long Term Durability of Grouts in Marine Environments Department

of Materials. Imperial College, London.

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glasses. Nucl. Instrum. and Meth. 194, 1.

Singh, Makhan, Mudahar, Gurmel S., 1992. Energy dependence of total photon attenuation coefficients

of composite materials. Appl. Radiat. Isot. 42, 907.

Singh, Makhan, Sandhu, Apjit Kaur, Brar, G.S., Mudahar, Gurmel S., 1993. Effect of weight fractions of

H, C, and O on total mass attenuation coefficients of HCO materials. Appl. Radiat. Isot. 44, 1073.

C. Singh et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 31 (2004) 1199–1205 1205