Investigation of some Properties of Building Materials Available in Sudan and Used for Gamma - Rays Shielding

Abstract

As ionizing radiation is associated with a variety of different fields such as hospitals, industry, energy generation nowadays, it becomes part of our life. When radiation is produced in high doses, it can be hazardous for human and thus need to be shielded out in a theme known as radiation protection. The radiation protection becomes important subject in physics and there are several researches going on in this area. The main ways of radiation protection are time, distance and shielding. In radiation shielding the choosing of materials is important and thus recent works has been focused on selection of materials. For this purpose, in this study the gamma ray shielding properties of some building materials (lead, iron, concrete, cement and clay) used in Sudan has been investigated, in terms of photon attenuation coefficients and the half value layer (HVL) at different gamma ray energies, have been experimentally determined by using Cs-137 and Co-60 source and compared with the calculated values. The measurements were performed for radiation intensity without shielding and with specific thickness of selected samples (building materials), using ion chamber placed at 2 meters from the gamma ray source. The obtained results showed that the linear attenuation coefficient (μ) has a linear relationship with the corresponding densities of the samples studied and inversely with photon energy, and the half value layer (HVL) was proportional directly with photon energy. As results of this evaluation, the selected samples could be used as a shielding for gamma radiation. The usage of lead combined with the selected materials mentioned above resulted in an improvement of the efficiency of building materials as gamma ray shielding.