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Iman Esmaili Paeen Afrakoti

Iman Esmaili Paeen Afrakoti

Academic rank: Associate Professor
ORCID:
Education: PhD.
ScopusId:
HIndex:
Faculty: Faculty of Technology and Engineering
Address: Engineering & Technology Department, University of Mazandaran, Pasdaran Street, Babolsar, Iran
Phone: 01135305134

Research

Title
Energy spectra unfolding of fast neutron sources using the group method of data handling and decision tree algorithms
Type
JournalPaper
Keywords
GMDH; Decision Tree; Unfolding; Neutron pulse height distribution; MCNPX-ESUT; 241Am-9Be; 252Cf
Year
2017
Journal NUCLEAR INSTRUMENTS & METHODS IN PHYSICS RESEARCH SECTION A-ACCELERATORS SPECTROMETERS DETECTORS AND ASSOCIATED EQUIPMENT
DOI
Researchers Seyed Abolfazl Hosseini ، Iman Esmaili Paeen Afrakoti

Abstract

Accurate unfolding of the energy spectrum of a neutron source gives important information about unknown neutron sources. The obtained information is useful in many areas like nuclear safeguards, nuclear nonproliferation, and homeland security. In the present study, the energy spectrum of a poly-energetic fast neutron source is reconstructed using the developed computational codes based on the Group Method of Data Handling (GMDH) and Decision Tree (DT) algorithms. The neutron pulse height distribution (neutron response function) in the considered NE-213 liquid organic scintillator has been simulated using the developed MCNPX-ESUT computational code (MCNPX-Energy engineering of Sharif University of Technology). The developed computational codes based on the GMDH and DT algorithms use some data for training, testing and validation steps. In order to prepare the required data, 4000 randomly generated energy spectra distributed over 52 bins are used. The randomly generated energy spectra and the simulated neutron pulse height distributions by MCNPX-ESUT for each energy spectrum are used as the output and input data. Since there is no need to solve the inverse problem with an ill-conditioned response matrix, the unfolded energy spectrum has the highest accuracy. The 241Am-9Be and 252Cf neutron sources are used in the validation step of the calculation. The unfolded energy spectra for the used fast neutron sources have an excellent agreement with the reference ones. Also, the accuracy of the unfolded energy spectra obtained using the GMDH is slightly better than those obtained from the DT. The results obtained in the present study have good accuracy in comparison with the previously published paper based on the logsig and tansig transfer functions.