A novel barium oxide-based Iraqi sand glass to attenuate the low gamma-ray energies: Fabrication, mechanical, and radiation protection capacity evaluation

In the present work, untreated Iraqi sand with grain sizes varied between 100 and 200 ㎛ was used to produce a colored glass sample that has shielding features against the low gamma-ray energy. Therefore, a weight of 70-60 wt % sand was mixed with 9-14 wt% B₂O₃, 8-10 wt% Na₂O, 4-6 wt% of CaO, 3-6 wt% Al₂O₃, in addition to 0.3% of Co₂O₃. After melting and annealing the glass sample, the X-ray diffraction spectrometry was applied to affirm the amorphous phase of the fabricated glass samples. Moreover, the X-ray dispersive energy spectrometry was used to measure the chemical composition, and the MH-300A densimeter was applied to measure the fabricated sample's density. The Makishima-Makinzie model was applied to predict the mechanical properties of the fabricated glass. Besides, the Monte Carlo simulation was used to estimate the fabricated glass sample's radiation shielding capacity in the low-energy region between 22.1 and 160.6 keV. Therefore, the simulated linear attenuation coefficient changed between 10.725 and 0.484 cm^-1, raising the gamma-ray energy between 22.1 and 160.6 keV. Also, other shielding parameters such as a half-value layer, pure lead equivalent thickness, and buildup factors were calculated.