Capabilities of the FLUKA code for applications in space research

Abstract

FLUKA is a general purpose Monte Carlo code able to describe the transport and interaction of any radiation type in complex geometries over an energy range extending from thermal neutrons to ultrarelativistic cosmic rays. It has many different applications in accelerator design, detector studies, dosimetry, radiation protection, medical physics, and space research. Recently, CERN as copyright holder initiated a new distribution (http://fluka.cern) under revised licensing conditions, aimed to facilitate the access to the code as well as intercomparisons, while assuring its long term sustainability in the context of a renewed collaboration framework. FLUKA embeds a package for the calculation of effects induced by galactic cosmic rays and solar particle events. It couples the respective source terms with various geometry formats, allowing to import voxelized human phantoms and in the near future CAD models, which are well adapted for instance to the spacecraft description. FLUKA is extensively used within the scope of the Radiation to Electronics project at CERN in order to characterize the radiation environment in which electronics operate, as well as its response. Concerning the latter, there are numerous common points of interest with space applications. Indeed, FLUKA has been used to predict the response of electronics to radiation in a variety of conditions not included in radiation testing standards for space, and/or not accessible through conventional ground level testing. As will be shown in detail in the conference contribution, such results include Single Event Effects (SEE) simulations, and when possible benchmarks, for very high (100 MeV/n - 5 GeV/n) and ultra-high (>5 GeV/n) energy heavy ions, high energy electrons (200 MeV), and high-energy protons (>200 MeV). Thanks to recent developments and the help of the graphical interface Flair (http://flair.cern), FLUKA is widely used also to evaluate radiobiological effects, offering various capabilities, e.g. linear-quadratic alpha/beta scoring, DICOM file importing, as well DVH generation for various quantities on the RTSTRUCT, useful for quality assurance of treatment planning systems and further re-optimization. FLUKA at present has arrived to a high level of maturity, however the intrinsic rigid code architecture poses obstacles for further evolution. Our long term goal, in addition to extending its physics performances, is to modernize its architecture, to welcome more easily external contributions. Several paths are currently envisaged, like finding synergies with Geant4, either at lower level and at the interface level, this way offering the user the possibility to run with the same input different physics models and crosscheck the results.

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