Faster and more accurate transport procedures for HZETRN (Q608848)

From the authors' abstract: The deterministic transport code HZETRN was developed for studying the effects of space radiation on astronauts and instrumentation protected by various shielding materials and structures. In this work, several aspects of code verification are examined. First, a detailed derivation of the light particle \((A\leq 4)\) and heavy ion \((A>4)\) numerical marching algorithms used in HZETRN is given. The paper provides a complete description of the numerical methods currently used in the code and is identified as a key component of the verification process. Next, a new numerical method for light particle transport is presented, and improvements to the heavy ion transport algorithm are discussed. Run time comparisons between the old and new algorithms are given for one, two, and three layer slabs of 100 g/cm\(^{2}\) of aluminum, polyethylene, and water. The new algorithms are found to be almost 100 times faster for solar particles event simulations and almost 10 times faster for galactic cosmic ray simulations.