Fiber optic ionizing radiation detector

The authors describe a novel design for an ionizing radiation sensor using coiled optical fibers, which can be placed within or near a radioactive source. To evaluate this sensor, coiled fiber samples were placed inside metallic and metal-matrix composite cylinders to evaluate the sensitivity of the detector and the shielding effectiveness of the materials. Further study has shown that the proposed experimental setup can be used to determine the mass attenuation coefficient. The mass attenuation coefficient was then used to optimize the number of windings that would make the detector most effective for radiation detection. An advantage of this detector is that it will be possible to repair the damage caused by ionizing radiation. This can be done by heating the fibers to a moderate temperature and holding the temperature for a specific time to eliminate the color centers.<
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