The Effect of Solar Particles in the Choice of Alloy Shielding in a Satellite

Authors

1 Research institute for astronomy and astrophysics of Maragha, P.O.Box 55134-441, Maragha, Iran Iranian Space Agency, P.O.Box 1465774111, Tehran, Iran

2 University of Tabriz, P.O.Box 51664-16471, Tabriz, Iran

3 Research institute for astronomy and astrophysics of Maragha, P.O.Box 55134-441, Maragha, Iran

Abstract

The damages and logical failures in di erent parts of a satellite may occur during a solar event, when a bulk of solar energetic particles approaching the Earth. During solar events, these particles may cause extensive damages which are even permanent (hard errors). A way of damage reduction is designing a proper coating as the fuselage. As protons are the major component of solar particles and because the most of hard errors are caused by neutrons, in this work, we evaluated di erent shielding material against these type of errors. To avoid hard errors due to neutrons, we need to know solar energetic particles ux. During a solar are a satellite receives the maximum ux of protons, so we used protons with an energy range of 100 MeV to 1 GeV which is the most sensitive energy range to the Sun activities. In the present work, we have calculated the ux of solar energetic particles which collides a typical satellite in low earth orbit. Using OMERE software, coordinates and speci cations of a satellite were determined virtually and this typical satellite were used to calculate the typical values of particles uxes received by satellite during di erent solar ares of di erent solar cycles during occurrence of solar ares. Then, we have used FLUKA software, to study 10 di erent material layers as typical fuselages assuming proton primaries collide with them in the above energy ranges. Then we calculated neutron uxes produced when a proton interacts with these materials. At the nal stage we have shown that in this energy ranges Aluminum makes the best shielding against solar particles and adding Magnesium to alloy may improve the fuselage protection against hard errors.

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