Experimental validation of the Active Shielding Particle Pusher code

Passive radiation shielding alone is insufficient for protecting astronauts from galactic cosmic ray exposure. Active shields, utilizing electromagnetic fields to deflect heavy charged ions in space, could be used to supplement conventional passive shielding. Due to experimental limitations, simulation capability is crucial for designing effective active shields. The purpose of this work is to validate the Active Shielding Particle Pusher (ASPP) code, used to characterize active shielding efficacy, using beamline measurements conducted at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. Emphasis is placed on (1) comparing shielding efficacy as a function of a scaled dimensionless parameter among various electric dipole sphere sizes and center-to-center distances, (2) comparing shielding efficacy as a function of dipole rotation angle as the voltage applied to each sphere is varied independently, and (3) comparing shielding efficacy observed in measurements and simulations to broaden the validation domain of ASPP. Simulated and measured shielding efficacy data are shown to agree within a factor of 1.10 on average. The results of this work demonstrate that dimensionless scaling of parameters characteristic of the active shield and incident radiation can be used to create scaling laws for a range of ion species relevant for protecting astronauts from galactic cosmic ray exposure at beamline energies.