High-performance radiation modeling of CAD defined shapes using Geant4

Satellite electronics design requires the ability to compute the radiation dose on circuits inside a mechanical object to know whether they will survive long enough to complete their mission. Similarly, in radiation therapy there is a need to compute the radiation deposited in objects outside the shielded therapy room. This also occurs in the upgrades of detectors by DOE. In these cases and others one needs to be able to rapidly model radiation effects through objects defined by CAD files. The application of and improvement of Geant4 for modeling of tessellated shapes imported from CAD files will be investigated. Modeling speed will be improved through use of the Oblique Bounding Box (OBB) tree, the ability to combine parts with averaged materials, and the ability to present a cross-platform, user-friendly interface for carrying out these tasks. As well, translators from materials known to standard CAD modeling tools to those known to Geant4 will be developed. Plugins will be developed to improve the speed of modeling tessellated objects, and an initial cross platform GUI for Geant4 will be developed. Improved methods for parsing CAD files with more extensive product information will be developed. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits: This project will provide the software for designing the shielding needed for satellite components and radiation therapy centers. The software will allow rapid import of standard descriptions of such facilities and provide rapid evaluation of proposed designs for radiation shielding sufficiency. The software will be made available to satellite designers, designers of radiation therapy centers, and researchers in need of shielding calculations.