Investigation of mass attenuation coefficients of water, concrete and bakelite at different energies using the FLUKA Monte Carlo code Nilgun Demir • Urkiye Akar Tarim • Maria-Ana Popovici • Zehra Nur Demirci • Orhan Gurler • Iskender Akkurt Received: 13 February 2013 / Published online: 4 April 2013 Ó Akade ´miai Kiado ´, Budapest, Hungary 2013 Abstract The mass attenuation coefficients of water, bakelite and concrete sample defined in the simulation package were obtained using the FLUKA Monte Carlo code at 59.5, 80.9, 140.5, 356.5, 661.6, 1173.2 and 1332.5 keV photon energies. The results for the mass attenuation coefficients obtained by simulation have been compared with experimental and the theoretical ones and good agreement has been observed. The results indicate that this process can be followed to determine the data on the attenuation of gamma-rays with the several energies in other materials. Also, the deposited energy by 661.6 keV photons at several thicknesses of each media was deter- mined as being an important data for radiation shielding studies. Keywords Water  Bakelite  Concrete  FLUKA  Energy deposition  Mass attenuation coefficient Introduction The mass attenuation coefficient (l/q) is one of the most important quantities characterizing the penetration and diffusion of gamma-rays in any target material [1, 2]. Knowledge of mass attenuation coefficients of gamma-rays in several materials is essential requirement for nuclear diagnostics, radiation protection, nuclear medicine, radia- tion dosimetry, radiation biophysics and etc. [3]. In recent years many researchers have been studied on determination of mass attenuation coefficients theoretically and experi- mentally for different materials. Such as, some experiments have been performed by Demir and Keles ¸[4] for mass attenuation coefficients of concrete including boron waste. Mass attenuation coefficients of the 12 concrete samples with and without supplementary cementitious materials have been measured by Yılmaz et al. [5]. Measurements of the mass attenuation coefficients of water [6–8] and bakelite [9] have been also carried out for different photon energies by Ramachandran et al. [6], Akar et al. [7], I ˙ sh- akog ˘lu and Baytas ¸[8] and Sidhu et al. [9]. Similarly reports on the theoretical computation of the mass attenu- ation coefficients of ordinary, hematite-serpentine, ilmen- ite-limonite, basalt-magnetite, ilmenite, steel-scrap and steel-magnetite concretes by Bashter [10], concretes con- taining marble by Akkurt and El-Khayatt [11] are also available in the literature. Additionally, some recent works also performed for calculation of the mass attenuation coefficients by Gurler and Akar Tarim [12] and Stankovic et al. [13] using the Monte Carlo code written by them- selves and the photon transport Monte Carlo software, respectively. In this work, we have tried to estimate the mass atten- uation coefficients of water, bakelite and concrete samples for the photons with the energies of 59.5, 80.9, 140.5, 356.5, 661.6, 1173.2 and 1332.5 keV by using the FLUKA Monte Carlo code due to its event-by-event tracking fea- ture. FLUKA is a Monte Carlo simulation package for a variety of models of particle transport and interaction with N. Demir (&)  U. A. Tarim  O. Gurler Physics Department, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Uludag University, Gorukle Campus, 16059 Bursa, Turkey e-mail: dnilgun@uludag.edu.tr M.-A. Popovici Physics Department, Politehnica University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania Z. N. Demirci  I. Akkurt Suleyman Demirel University, Fen-Edebiyat Fakultesi Fizik Bol., Isparta, Turkey 123 J Radioanal Nucl Chem (2013) 298:1303–1307 DOI 10.1007/s10967-013-2494-y