Dose level at the surface of materials in space environment
Christophe Inguimbert  1@  
1 : ONERA Toulouse
ONERA
2 Avenue Edouard Belin 31055 TOULOUSE CEDEX4 -  France

The radiative constraint is commonly estimated for space projects via the calculation of the ionizing dose. It is a combination of energetic spectra of different particles (electrons, protons) considering their respective ionization capabilities. The calculation of the ionizing dose is very well-known and managed in the field of space applications. Monte Carlo transport codes are commonly used to calculate and express the received dose as a function of the depth of the materials. Dose depth profile that express the dose as a function of the depth is the basis of any radiation assessment at space project level. Such metric is of particular importance for materials' surface, such as thermal control coatings, that are subject to high level of radiations. But, environmental fluxes are very poorly defined at low energies. Standard environment models such as AE8 and AP8 have cutoff energies respectively of 40 keV and 100 keV, preventing any accurate estimation of the dose below 1 µm depth. But, new environment models valid down to a few hundreds of eV have been developed and are available for the space community (AE9/AP9, GREEN). In addition, radiation transport models valid down to a few eV for electrons and a few tens of keV for protons have been recently developed and made available to the space community. All these elements allows to extend dose depth profile calculations below 1µm depth and down to several tens of nm. Actually, it is shown that the radiative constraint is majored by a factor between 10 to 100 to the very near surface of the materials compared to former calculations that neglects the low energy part of the radiative environment.

 

 



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