A Method to Optimize the Electron Spectrum for Simulating Thermo-Mechanical Response to X-ray Radiation

• Published in: Symmetry (Basel) 2020-01, Vol.12 (1), p.59
• Main Authors: Ran, Xianwen, Wang, Bo, Zhang, Kun, Tang, Wenhui
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aluminum; Deformation effects; Detonation; Energy; energy-deposited profile; Gasification; gasified blow-off effect; High altitude; high altitude nuclear detonation; Least squares method; Mechanical analysis; Optimization; Radiation; Relativistic electron beams; Soft x rays; soft x-ray; Tantalum; thermo-mechanical deformation; X ray sources; X-rays
• ISSN: 2073-8994; 2073-8994
• DOI: 10.3390/sym12010059

The X-ray pulse originating from high altitude nuclear detonation (HAND) is mainly soft X-ray and its intensity is high enough to gasify the penetrated material and then lead to the severe thermo-mechanical deformation of unpenetrated material from the gasified blow-off effect. This effect cannot be directly reproduced in a lab for the lack of the X-ray source like HAND. At present, the low-energy relativistic electron beams resulting from an electron accelerator are usually used to approximately reproduce this effect, but the difference in the energy-deposited profile in materials between the electron and X-ray cannot be eliminated. In this paper, the symmetric linear least squares method was used to optimize the electron spectrum, and the general Monte Carlo N-Particle Transport Code calculations showed the optimized spectrum can produce the same energy-deposited profile in aluminum, copper, and tantalum with the soft X-rays like 1 keV or 3 keV spectrums. This indicates that it is possible to simulate the severe thermo-mechanical deformation resulting from HAND using the optimized electron spectrums.