Element analysis and calculation of the attenuation coefficients for gold, bronze and water matrixes using MCNP, WinXCom and experimental data

•We used MCNP-4C code for simulation.•We compared experimental and MCNP results for various matrixeses in different energies.•We simulated mass attenuation coefficients and element analysis (EDXRF) for some matrixes.

In this study, element analysis and the mass attenuation coefficient for matrixes of gold, bronze and water with various impurities and the concentrations of heavy metals (Cu, Mn, Pb and Zn) are evaluated and calculated by the MCNP simulation code for photons emitted from Barium-133, Americium-241 and sources with energies between 1 and 100 keV. The MCNP data are compared with the experimental data and WinXCom code simulated results by Medhat. The results showed that the obtained results of bronze and gold matrix are in good agreement with the other methods for energies above 40 and 60 keV, respectively. However for water matrixes with various impurities, there is a good agreement between the three methods MCNP, WinXCom and the experimental one in low and high energies.