Study of the dosimetric characteristics of cosmic radiation at civil aviation altitudes

The dependence of the doses on solar activity for intermediate levels of the solar modulation parameter has been studied by means of simulations carried out by the Monte Carlo transport code FLUKA. The vertical cut-off rigidities investigated lie between 0.4 and 6.1 GV. The calculated results show that the linear dependence proposed in a previous work, for the effective dose rate as a function of the solar modulation parameter, can be considered as an acceptable approximation. In addition, some dosimetric characteristics of cosmic radiation and some properties of the dosemeters in use for monitoring in the cosmic ray environment have been analysed with a view to simplifying measurements. The depth-dose curves in the ICRU sphere and the response of a tissue-equivalent ionisation chamber have been determined by the FLUKA code for a number of cosmic ray spectra. On the basis of the calculated results, it is concluded that a value of the depth, d, which would make the ambient dose equivalent a conservative predictor of the effective dose, cannot be specified for cosmic radiation. However, the operational quantity can be useful in order to verify the predictions of Monte Carlo calculations. It is demonstrated that a crude approximation of the ambient dose equivalent could be obtained by multiplying by 2 the absorbed dose measured by a tissue-equivalent ionisation chamber with wall thickness of 10 mm. (29 refs).