Photon attenuation coefficients and shielding effects of Jordanian building materials

Gamma-ray energy buildup factor calculations and shielding effects of some Jordanian building structures

“…The obtained energy buildup factors for the construction styles and the roof were used to examine the effectiveness of each style in shielding against external radiation. By calculating the concrete equivalent thickness of each structure, the fractional transmission of photons, T, at different incident photon energies, was calculated according to the Beer-Lambert's Law that was modified to account for the effect of secondary radiation (Sharaf and Hamideen, 2013). The results obtained, Table 7, indicate that the accuracy of transmitted fraction is strongly dependent on the accuracy of buildup factors used in the calculations.…”

“…However, doors and windows are not included in these calculations. The chemical composition of building materials under consideration, Table1, that was used in our previous study (Sharaf and Hamideen, 2013), was taken from the literature for limestone (Mann et al, 2012), ordinary concrete (Bashter, 1997;Sing et al, 2004), bricks and cement plaster (Ahmad et al, 1998;CMSI, 2002).…”

“…Shelter in place may be recommended and this means going indoors and remaining indoors until the emergency is over. Such actions will reduce an individual's exposure to radiation resulting from a release of short duration, however, complete information about the effective shielding of the dwellings' walls and roofs should be available (Sharaf and Hamideen, 2013). A properly designed database that can provide an access to information regarding main protective measures, shielding and/or evacuation, for example, is invaluable tool to help first responders to make the correct decisions.…”

“…Some parameters of dosimetric interest were determined for a number of selected building materials using its measured attenuation coefficients (Sharaf and Hamideen, 2013). The calculations were based on Beer-Lambert's Law, which is usually used for thin wall and narrow beam geometry, and ignored buildup of scattered radiation so that the radiation intensity transmitted through walls was underestimated.…”

Measurement of Shielding Effectiveness of Building Blocks against 662 KeV Photons

“…Also, a similar effort was made by Sharaf et al, 5 where they investigated the mass attenuation coefficients of some Jordanian building material interaction with 50-3000 keV gamma-ray energy range photon. However, none of these referenced works made a useful comparison between the investigated materials and conventional shielding materials nor did they detail the peculiar attenuation properties of the commonly used building materials in developing countries.…”