Investigation of HZETRN 2010 as a Tool for Single Event Effect Qualification of Avionics Systems

Abstract

NASA's future missions are focused on deep space for human exploration that do not provide a simple emergency return to Earth. In addition, the deep space environment contains a constant background Galactic Cosmic Ray (GCR) radiation exposure, as well as periodic Solar Particle Events (SPEs) that can produce intense amounts of radiation in a short amount of time. Given these conditions, it is important that the avionics systems for deep space human missions are not susceptible to Single Event Effects (SEE) that can occur from radiation interactions with electronic components. The typical process to minimizing SEE effects is through using heritage hardware and extensive testing programs that are very costly.Previous work by Koontz, et al. [1] utilized an analysis-based method for investigating electronic component susceptibility. In their paper, FLUKA, a Monte Carlo transport code, was used to calculate SEE and single event upset (SEU) rates. This code was then validated against in-flight data. In addition, CREME-96, a deterministic code, was also compared with FLUKA and inflight data. However, FLUKA has a long run-time (on the order of days), and CREME-96 has not been updated in several years. This paper will investigate the use of HZETRN 2010, a deterministic transport code developed at NASA Langley Research Center, as another tool that can be used to analyze SEE and SEU rates. The benefits to using HZETRN over FLUKA and CREME-96 are that it has a very fast run time (on the order of minutes) and has been shown to be of similar accuracy as other deterministic and Monte Carlo codes when considering dose [2,3,4]. The 2010 version of HZETRN has updated its treatment of secondary neutrons and thus has improved its accuracy over previous versions. In this paper, the Linear Energy Transfer (LET) spectra are of interest rather than the total ionizing dose. Therefore, the LET spectra output from HZETRN 2010 will be compared with the FLUKA and in-flight data to validate HZETRN 2010 as a computational tool for SEE qualification by analysis.Furthermore, extrapolation of these data to interplanetary environments at 1 AU will be investigated to determine whether HZETRN 2010 can be used successfully and confidently for deep space mission analyses.

Investigation of HZETRN 2010 as a Tool for Single Event Effect Qualification of Avionics Systems - Part II

“…Another modeling option to consider is the deterministic code HZETRN 2010 4 , which includes updates to address secondary particle shower effects more accurately. This paper builds on previous work by Rojdev, et al 5 to compare the use of HZETRN 2010 against CREME96 as a tool to verify spacecraft avionics system reliability in a space flight SEE environment. This paper will discuss modifications made to HZETRN 2010 to improve its performance for calculating SEE rates and compare results with both in-flight SEE rates and other calculation methods.…”

“…In a previous paper 5 , we showed that the LET spectra generated by HZETRN 2010 are limited to a maximum LET value of 11,596 MeV-cm 2 /g, reducing the utility of HZETRN 2010 as a tool for calculating SEU rates. To eliminate this limitation, a relatively minor change was made to the HZETRN 2010 source code to allow the calculated LET spectra output by HZETRN 2010 to be extended to higher LET values.…”