Discrimination of high-Z materials in concrete-filled containers using Muon Scattering Tomography

Leonor Frazao, Jaap Velthuis, Christian Thomay, Chris Steer

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

13 Citations (Scopus)
440 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

An analysis method of identifying materials using muon scattering tomography is presented, which uses previous knowledge of the position of high-Z objects inside a container and distinguishes them from similar materials. In particular, simulations were performed in order to distinguish a block of Uranium from blocks of Lead and Tungsten of the same size, inside a concrete-filled drum. The results show that, knowing the shape and position from previous analysis, it is possible to distinguish 5 × 5 × 5 cm3 blocks of these materials with about 4h of muon exposure, down to 2 × 2 × 2 cm3 blocks with 70h of data using multivariate analysis (MVA). MVA uses several variables, but it does not benefit the discrimination over a simpler method using only the scatter angles. This indicates that the majority of discrimination is provided by the angular information. Momentum information is shown to provide no benefits in material discrimination.
Original languageEnglish
Number of pages13
JournalJournal of Instrumentation
Volume11
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 21 Jul 2016

Keywords

  • Pattern recognition
  • cluster finding
  • calibration and fitting methods
  • Search for radioactive and fissile materials
  • Particle tracking detectors (Gaseous detectors)

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