Simulating Properties of Scintillating Integrated Fibers as Conformal Radiation Detectors
Name
sesler-jbsesler-sm-nse-2022-thesis.pdf
Description
Thesis PDF
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13.08 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
8faa780200dd3467cd28094d73dde47a
Author(s)
Sesler, Jefferson B.
Advisor(s)
Danagoulian, Areg
Date Issued
May 2022
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
Advancements in fabricating multifunctional fibers with embedded integrated circuits have the potential to create fibers with novel capabilities, including radiation detection when combined with elements of scintillating fiber detectors. By sensing and processing scintillation light within the fiber itself, integrated fibers could be woven into a fabric to make a rugged, conformal radiation detector. Such a fabric could be wearable or easily deployable in the field, and useful in searches for radiation sources or in performing neutron coincidence counting for plutonium. Before prototyping these fibers, it is necessary to show that a fabric detector will be able to detect a radiation at a safe distance in a short time, and it is helpful to optimize the fiber design to distinguish gamma rays from neutrons. This work presents two series of Monte Carlo simulations evaluating these capabilities. Calculating a fabric’s detection of a radiation source over background radiation entailed measuring the room background in our lab and developing a method to model it in the Monte Carlo simulation. We used this to predict the limits of a fabric’s sensitivity, showing that a wearable conformal detector performs comparably or better to existing portable commercial detectors. The second series of simulations examined whether the triggering of multiple fibers by gamma rays, but not by neutron radiation, could be used to distinguish the particles. We present the simulated readout of a variety of fabric and fiber geometries exposed to gamma rays and neutrons, and show that fabrics composed of thin fibers, ideally around 0.15mm to 0.2mm wide, can distinguish a large proportion of gamma ray events, but will need further characterization work to separate the remaining gammas from neutron events.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering
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