Attenuation Parameters and Effective Atomic Numbers of Concretes Containing Pumice for Some Photon Energies by Experiment, Simulation and Calculation

Photon mass attenuation coefficients and effective atomic numbers for three types of concretes containing pumice mineral in different rates (namely 0%, 50% and 100%) were studied by photon transmission experiments, by simulations and by theoretical calculations. Experimental procedure was realized by using a 3？×3？ NaI(Tl) connected to a 16k multichannel analyzer detector system for 511, 835 and 1275 keV photon energies. In simulations, Geant4 Monte Carlo simulation toolkit was used to estimate the total mass attenuation coefficients via total linear attenuation coefficients. For theoretical calculations, web version of XCOM code was used at 1 keV – 100 GeV energy region for comparison. Also, mean free paths and half value layer thicknesses of concretes were calculated at this energies by means of attenuation coefficients obtained by three methods. Results from each method were found to be in a reasonably good agreement. Besides, it was concluded that addition of heavy weight elements to concrete effected attenuation parameters positively