1. Use glass only.
What kind of glass is most effective for radiation shielding? What is the influence of its chemical composition, microstructure on the effectiveness of the materials as a radiation shielding?
2. Use glass with coating.
For example use lead coating layer: What is the method to apply the coating layer and what is the minimum thickness and if the plate still transparent?
3. Glass fussed to steel or other substrate
The combination of glass with other materials may give a better performance on the effectiveness of the materials as a radiation shielding. Any example on the current application?
HI
Glass is the ceramic material. Whcich having tendency to the absorb the high energy nutrons.
as per my understaning generally Lead ( Pb) based Glasses are used for the sheilding materials.
combination of glass with the othermaterials, such as the steel wich is better known as "CEREMIC MATRIX COMPOSITES" with the metals/ alloys are as fillers.
If what you want is to shield but at the same time to have a visual inspection ( light transmission ) you need radiation hard materials (so they don't get black in a short time ) together with high radiation absorption coefficient ( by doping).
In nuclear industry you have several options. For example you can have a look at the "Schott" company and their radiation hard glasses (BTW, I am not involved in any way with this company, just mentioning)
I think the real answer to your question is that it depends, and it depends primarily on the radiation that you are trying to attenuate with the glass.
For example, if you want to block gamma radiation, you want materials with a high z-number (like lead). In this case, you want highly leaded glass. Depending on how energetic the gamma-rays are, you may need several panes of very thick glass as is typical in hot cell windows. In hot cells, the windows can be something like 6 panes of 6-inch-thick leaded glass with some type of mineral oil filling the gaps to provide for optical transparency. Note that the lower-z oil (full of hydrogen and carbon) helps slow down neutrons if they are also present. If you have neutron radiation, you may also consider boron-doped shielding materials.
One other thought on the transparency: hot cell windows often start to cloud up after decades of use. In this case, the glass is still fine but the oil needs to be drained and the glass cleaned, reinstalled, and the gap re-filled with oil.
It surely depend on the type of radiation, its source, its intensity, its distance,...
but totally it is known that glasses with high z number metal-oxides like PbO , Bi2O3,... has better shielding properties under gamma and x-ray and other ultrahigh energy radiations. Also Borosillicate glasses can be used as a base glass in these condition.
You can use X-com program and MCNP code to predict glasses shielding properties under varied radiation intensities.
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