Radiation shielding and mechanical properties of Al2O3-Na2O-B2O3-Bi2O3 glasses using MCNPX Monte Carlo code

The glasses had the compositions 5Al(2)O(3)-29Na(2)O center dot(66 -x)B2O3-xBi(2)O(3) with (0 <= x <= 20 mol%) are prepared by melt quenching technique for serving as competitive candidates for radiation shielding. The radiation shielding and mechanical properties of the prepared glasses are presented and discussed in details. The mass attenuation coefficient (mu/p) which is the basic parameter in order to evaluate the interaction of radiation with shielding materials were calculated in MCNPX (version 2.6.0) code, and the results were compared with those obtained by XCOM and XMuDat programs. The simulation results match most of the XCOM and XMuDat data very well. Additionally, the results revealed that both (mu/p) and the effective atomic number (Z(eff)) of the prepared glasses increase with increasing Bi2O3 from 0 to 20 mol. %. It is found that the removal cross-sections, Sigma(R) values for the prepared glasses lie within the range 0.0932 - 0.1425 cm(-1).