Radiation damage: evaluation of cosmic rays fluxes and high intensity radiation beams

Cosmic rays causes concern about the lifetime and stability of materials exposed to these radiations and in particular about the life of humans involved in long term missions. Radiations interacting inside a bulk material generate along its track ionization, displacement of atoms through collisions, energy deposition, etc. Calculations to carefully evaluate these effects at low and high energies are important tools to be used in many applications. Indeed, materials and devices exposed to high intensity radiation beams present inside accelerator buildings may experience similar and even higher irradiation phenomena. We will present and discuss here some calculations of the dose absorbed by reference materials exposed to cosmic radiations. The same tools can be used to evaluate many other phenomena associated to the exposition of intense charged and neutral beams.