Virtual Laboratory of Ionizing Radiation Metrology: Validation by spectrometry

Abstract

The digital revolution is a reality. Many areas of industry, services as well as other applications fields, are migrating part of their jobs - even the totality - to the digital environment. Ionizing radiation metrology cannot be out of this world. For this objective, the creation of a virtual environment from the physical systems of radiation meter calibration has been proposed. The methodology tools used consist of describing all the key elements of this laboratory in Monte Carlo, using EGSnrc and egs_phd application, to simulate them and to validate the system comparing it with experimental data in the same condition. In this context, the N60 radiation quality, from ISO 4037-1, was chosen for this purpose. An AMPTEK XR-100T CdTe was used on spectrometry, and the spectra were corrected based on the Stripping method. The results showed a good agreement between experimental and simulated spectra, with a difference in their mean energy of 1.4% within the ±5% tolerance range required on ISO 4037-1:1996. After being corrected, both had mean energy of 47.2 keV and a spectral resolution of 33%, which complies with the requirements to produce the ISO N60 reference beam. This indicates that, at first analysis, the virtual system can be exposed to new metrological tests.