Characterization of weak, fair and strong neutron absorbing materials by means of neutron transmission: Beam hardening effect

Abstract

The characterization of neutron absorbing materials as well as quantification of neutron attenuation through matter is very essential in various fields, namely in shielding calculation. The objective of this work is to describe an experimental procedure to be used for the determination of neutron transmission through different materials. The proposed method is based on the relation between the gray value measured on neutron radiography image and the corresponding inducing neutron beam. For such a purpose, three kinds of materials (in shape of plate) were investigated using thermal neutrons: (1) boron-alloyed stainless steel as strong absorber; (2) copper and steel as fair absorbers and (3) aluminum as weak absorber. This work is not limited to the determination of neutron transmission through matters; it is also spread out to the measure of the surface density of the neutron absorbing elements ( ρ s ) as a function of thickness of neutron absorbing material such as boron-alloyed stainless steel. The beam hardening effect depending on material thickness was also studied using the neutron transmission measurements. A theoretical approach was used to interpret the experimental results. The neutron transmission measurements were performed at the Neutron Radiography and Tomography facility of the Atomic Institute of the Austrian Universities in Vienna. Finally, a Maxwellian neutron distribution of incident neutron beam was used in the theoretical calculations of neutron energy shift in order to compare with experiments results. The obtained experimental results are in a good agreement with the developed theoretical approach.