MicroShield^®

MicroShield^® is a comprehensive photon/gamma ray shielding and dose assessment program that is widely used for designing shields, estimating source strength from radiation measurements, minimizing exposure to people, and teaching shielding principles.

MicroShield^® is useful to health physicists, waste managers, design engineers, and radiological engineers and only requires a basic knowledge of radiation and shielding principles.

MicroShield^® is fully interactive and utilizes extensive input error checking. Integrated tools provide graphing of results, material and source file creation, source inference with decay (dose-to-Ci calculations accounting for decay and daughter buildup), projection of exposure rate versus time as a result of decay, access to material and nuclide data, and decay heat calculations.
 
MicroShield’s^®  Features Include:

1. Full Microsoft Windows^® 10 compatibility.
2. Export results into Microsoft Word^® and Excel^®.
3. French and German language software applications which utilize international numerical formats (decimal commas, etc.).
4. Sixteen geometries that accommodate offset dose points and as many as ten standard shields plus source self-shielding and cylinder cladding.
5. The geometry display for entry is re-scaled as dimensions are entered. Dimensional data are accepted in meters, centimeters, feet, or inches.
6. Updated Library data (radionuclides, attenuation, buildup, and dose conversion) reflect standard data from ICRP 38 and 107 as well as ANSI/ANS standards and RSICC publications. Dose conversion factors include (ICRP) Publication 116 absorbed dose rates and dose conversion factors from ANSI/ANS-6.1.1-1977.
7. Includes a wide variety of custom materials based on NIST, ANSI/ANS-6.4.2-2006, etc.
8. Buildup and uncollided results are both automatically and simultaneously calculated.
9. Provides the ability to design and save up to eight custom materials for any case to add to the twelve built-in materials.
10. Sources may be created and saved and moved among cases, either as nuclides or energies, and as concentrations or totals. Several photon grouping methods are provided including custom (user defined).
11. Source decay can be calculated with daughter products generated.
12. As many as twenty-five energy groups (with an energy range of 15 keV to 10 MeV) may be used; input may be concentration or totals.
13. Sensitivity of exposure rate to time, source dimension, shield thickness, or distance can be investigated. Integration conversion verification can be conducted with sensitivity to quadrature order.
14. Decay heat/energy can be calculated.

 
Geometry – Source Configurations Include: 

• Point
• Line
• Disk
• Rectangular Area – Vertical
• Rectangular Area – Horizontal
• Sphere
• Cylinder Volume – Side Shields
• Cylinder Volume – End Shields
• Cylinder Surface – Internal Dose Point
• Cylinder Surface – External Dose Point
• Annular Cylinder – Internal Dose Point
• Annular Cylinder – External Dose Point
• Rectangular Volume
• Truncated Cone
• Infinite Plane
• Infinite Slab

 
MicroShield^® v11 New Features:

MicroShield^® v11 includes multi-shield buildup factor calculations as well as

• Inclusion of the Ambient Dose Equivalent and Directional Dose Equivalent factors from ICRP-74
• Microsoft Windows^® 10 compatibility
• Improved buildup sensitivity features. A case can now be run using each shield as the buildup and summary table showing all results is provided in the main report.
• Enhanced nuclide import functional – import in units of Becquerels (Bq) or Curies (Ci)
• Ability to change and specify individual shield colors
• Additional custom material files from NIST standards

 
Requirements:

• Microsoft Windows^® 10, 8/8.1, 7, Vista^®, or XP^®
• Microsoft^® Internet Explorer^® Version 7 and above