A multi-code, multi-physics approach investigating the impact of vegetation on prompt gamma-ray energy deposition
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-26-2025
Abstract
During the age of above-ground nuclear weapons testing, the effect of vegetation on radiation energy deposition in soil was computationally too challenging to study. Today, improvements in high-performance computing, mature and accurate radiation transport models, and user-friendly optimization and statistical analysis software packages enable investigations into modeling and quantifying the impact of forest vegetation on the prompt gamma-ray energy deposition within the soil from an atmospheric nuclear weapon detonation. Our approach simulates radiation transport, amasses results, and statistically analyzes the results using CUBIT ® , Dakota, and MCNP ® to perform meshing, geometry creation, and radiation transport. Depending on the forest parameters, there is 0.16% --1.3% change in photon energy deposition in the soil. This research successfully demonstrates a methodology for streamlining a complex radiation modeling effort across multiple codes to quantify and answer a nuclear weapons effects question.
Source Publication
The Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation: Applications, Methodology, Technology (ISSN 1548-5129 | eISSN 1557-380X)
Recommended Citation
Clement PA, Dailey WT, Schubert Kabban CM, Holland DE. A multi-code, multi-physics approach investigating the impact of vegetation on prompt gamma-ray energy deposition. The Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation: Applications, Methodology, Technology. 2025;0(0). doi:10.1177/15485129251349540
Comments
This article is published online ahead of inclusion in a future issue of JDMS.