How Does the Soil Chemical Composition Affect the Mass Attenuation Coefficient? A Study Using Computer Simulation to Understand the Radiation-Soil Interaction Processes

A novel approach based on X-ray fluorescence and photon attenuation to the analysis of soils for forensic investigation

“…compounds (Sposito, 2008). In this study, the XRF analysis showed that SiO 2 , Al 2 O 3 and Fe 2 O 3 (Table 2) contributed to over 92 % of the chemical composition of the soils studied as observed by other authors in Brazilian soils (Medhat et al, 2014;Pires et al, 2016;Ferreira et al, 2018;Camargo et al, 2021;Prandel et al, 2021).…”

“…The mixture rule used to give the mass attenuation coefficient is also prone to drawbacks because it disregards interactions among the atoms of the compounds (Almeida Junior et al, 2017). However, the comparison between the measured and calculated values indicates the reliability of the mass attenuation computer-based method to predict soil radiation interaction parameters, as already ratified by several studies (Cesareo et al, 1994;Akkurt et al, 2005;Manohara et al, 2008;Han and Demir, 2010;Kucuk et al, 2013;Medhat et al, 2014;Ferreira et al, 2018;Camargo et al, 2021;Taqi et al, 2021).…”

“…We could see that these differences among soils influenced the radiation interaction parameters. Many authors have described the role of the chemical composition of materials in radiation attenuation (Kucuk et al, 2013;Taqi et al, 2016;Ferreira et al, 2018;Camargo et al, 2021;Pires et al, 2021). Recently, Pires et al (2019) demonstrated the relationship between the soil minerals and radiation interaction parameters, highlighting the particle density importance in the attenuation of the radiation by the matter (Al-Masri et al, 2013).…”

“…Radiation interaction properties such as mass attenuation coefficient (μ), atomic (σ a ) and electronic (σ e ) cross-sections, effective atomic number (Z eff ), and electron density (N el ) can be determined when the composition and density of the materials are known (Han and Demir, 2009;Medhat and Pires, 2016;Ferreira et al, 2018). Many types of analyses can be conducted based on these parameters and XRF measurements, such as variations of the interaction parameters with photon energy or the contribution of processes such as the photoelectric effect, coherent and incoherent scatterings, and pair production to the mass attenuation coefficient (Camargo et al, 2021).…”

Use of nuclear techniques in soil science: A literature review of the Brazilian contribution

“…Theoretical estimates and experimental measurements of the mass attenuation coefficient exhibited a good agreement between them. Elements of high atomic number such as Fe 2 O 3 and TiO 2 greatly influenced the attenuation of low photon energies (Camargo et al, 2021). Following the same idea, Medhat and Pires (2016) published another study with a detailed analysis of the photon atomic cross-section (σ a ) of soils of different types.…”