ACORDE: A new application for estimating the dose absorbed by passengers and crews in commercial flights

Abstract

Atmospheric radiation produced during the interaction of cosmic rays with the atmosphere could be considerably high at typical flight altitudes and constitutes a risk factor for people and avionics onboard the plane. In this work, we present ACORDE, a Monte Carlo-based method to estimate the dose during a commercial flight by using state-of-the-art simulation codes and considering the course travelled, the real-time atmospheric and geomagnetic conditions, and a model of the plane and an anthropomorphic phantom to obtain the effective dose on a flight-by-flight basis.