COMPARISON OF SECONDARY FRAGMENT FLUENCE PREDICTIONS OF THE SPACE RADIATION TRANSPORT CODE HETC-HEDS WITH LABORATORY DATA FOR HIGH-ENERGY HEAVY ION BEAMS

摘要

When space radiations pass through spacecraft shielding and the human body, their energies and composition are altered by atomic and nuclear interactions with the materials being penetrated. Transport of the space radiation fields through these materials, can be mathematically simulated by transport codes utilizing either solutions of the Boltzmann equation or Monte Carlo techniques, obtained by balancing changes in particle fluxes as they traverse a small volume of material with the gains and losses caused by atomic and nuclear collisions. Recently, the Monte Carlo radiation transport code HETC has been extended to include heavy ion nuclear interaction models and the associated software modifications needed for heavy ion tracking. The resulting code, called HETC-HEDS, is capable of carrying out three-dimensional transport of all components, including heavy ions, of the complete space radiation environment. In this work we present comparisons of predictions from this newly-developed tool with recent laboratory beam measurements of the fluences of secondary particle species produced by the interactions of a cosmic ray heavy ion species, Fe, with thick targets. An overview of the HETC-HEDS Code system is presented. Plans for further development and testing of this new tool are also presented.