Radiation shielding study of WO₃–ZnO–PbO–B₂O₃ glasses using Geant4 and Phys-X: A comparative study

This work aims to report the radiation shielding ability of WO₃–ZnO–PbO–B₂O₃ glasses and to understand the effect of WO₃ on the shielding behavior of this glass system. Geant4 code was applied to calculate the mass attenuation coefficient between 0.1218 and 1.458 MeV. The Phys-X software was used to validate the simulation results. Decrease in the transmission factor (TF) for the selected glasses with an increase in the thickness of the glass from 0.2 to 1 cm has been noticed and discussed. The maximum TF for the glass with composition of 20PbO-80B₂O₃ occurred for 0.2 cm thickness and equals to 0.44 at 0.1218 MeV and 0.966 at 1.086 MeV. Whereas, the maximum TF for 10WO₃-10ZnO-20PbO-60B₂O₃ sample with a thickness of 0.2 cm varied between 0.256 and 0.95. The TF results emphasize the fact that the sample's power to attenuate the photons becomes weaker with the increase in the energy of the photon. The radiation protection efficiency (RPE) increases with the increase in the thickness of the glass and the amount of WO_3. The replacement of 20 mol % of ZnO by 10 mol % of WO₃ leads to the increase in the RPE from 8.83 to 12.03% at x = 0.4 cm, from 16.89 to 22.61% at x = 0.8 cm and from 20.64 to 27.42% at x = 1 cm. At 0.444 MeV, the linear attenuation coefficient (LAC) increases by 1.52 due to the increase in the density by 1.46, which indicated that if the density of the glass is doubled, the LAC almost doubles, and the WZPB7 glass with highest density attenuates more photons.