A new heavy-mineral doped clay brick for gamma-ray protection purposes

The present work novelty pointed to fabricate new clay bricks doped with heavy minerals to be used in the building materials as a candidate for radiation shielding. The bricks were manufactured as (y)_{Iron mineral}+ (1-y)_clay, where y = 0, 0.1, 0.2 and 0.3 fractional weight. The prepared bricks' chemical composition and density were introduced to the MCNP-5 code to assess the prepared bricks' protection capacity. The simulated linear attenuation coefficient (LAC) was confirmed by comparing the simulated results with those calculated by the Phy-X/PSD program. We found that the simulated and calculated LAC were close together. The diff (%) between the MCNP-5 and Phy-X/PSD is in the range ±2% for all the fabricated bricks. The maximum LAC values occurred at 0.015 MeV, varied between 21.540 and 39.553 cm^-1 for bricks N0 and N30. The lowest LAC achieved at 15 MeV varied between 0.068 and 0.090 cm^-1. Bricks without heavy mineral addition have the lowest LAC values at all energies, ranging from 21.540 cm^-1 to 0.068 cm^-1, while bricks with 30 wt% heavy minerals have the highest LAC. The half-value layer (HVL) values decreased gradually with increasing the mineral ratio in the fabricated bricks. The thinner brick HVL achieved for the sample N 30 with 30 wt % heavy mineral, growing from 0.017 to 7.675 cm. The effective atomic number (Z_eff) was reported, and we found that the minimum Z_eff values equal to 14.006, 14.865, 15.705, and 16.394 for bricks N 0, N 10, N 20, N 30, respectively.