X-Ray Shielding Characteristics of Sand Reenforced Plastic Concrete Blocks

X-Ray shielding efficiency of sand reenforced plastic concrete blocks synthesized using sand and waste sachet water plastic in the percentage ratio of 50:50, 30:70, 10:90 and 0:100 has been studied in this paper. The density of the synthesized concrete blocks and their x-ray shielding characteristics were measured using a densitometer and a set of x-rays shielding fixed diagnostic x-ray machine and digital Geiger counter respectively. The density value decreased as the sand percentage decreased from 1.922 gcm-1 to 1.250 gcm-1 with an increasing plastic percentage, resulting from the substitution of sand with lighter plastic. The linear attenuation coefficient (LAC) and the mass attenuation coefficient (MAC) values increased with an increase in the percentage of plastic while the tenth value layer (TVL) and half value layer (HVL) decreased with increase in the percentage of plastic in the concrete material. The value of the mean free path (MFP) appeared higher when more sand composition. The results demonstrated that more plastic composition improved the concrete shielding efficiency even as the density continued to decrease. This might be since more spaces are closed with more plastic percentage, closing gaps between sand particles. The study demonstrated that the sand reenforced plastic concrete presented in this work offers greater advantage solves the problems of light weight and durability that is faced with conventional cement concrete materials in X-rays shielding applications.