Lab -1

Rinkal Naik (201901421)∗ and Miti Purohit (201901466)†

Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information & Communication Technology,
Gandhinagar, Gujarat 382007, India
CS-302, Modeling and Simulation

In this lab we numerically and analytically analyze radioactive chain decay. We study the be-
haviour of radioactive elements for different decay rates and study the properties of the system. Our
main observations are the dependence of the maximum total disintegration rate on the decay rates,
and the conditions for transient equilibrium and secular equilibrium.

I. INTRODUCTION substanceA’s radioactive decay - the mass it will lose to

Radioactive decay is a phenomenon that can be under-
stood with the help of compartment model and that can
be easily formulated as an ordinary differential equation.
The mass of a radioactive substance decays at a rate pro-
portional to the mass of the substance. In this report, we
extend this understanding to study radioactive decay for
a chain of elements. In a chain decay phenomenon, more
than one element follows the radioactive disintegration.
For an example of 3 elements, a substance A decays into
substance B which in turn decays into an other substance
C. The disintegration rates for each of the radioactive ele-
ments are a function of their respective masses and decay
constants. With the help of the compartment model, we
can model all the three elements as a compartment and
calculate the masses of each element by looking at the
inflow and outflow.
II. MODEL
add introdution to what is comaprtment model
For a single radioactive element, the rate of disintegra-
tion is proportional to the mass of the element. Thus, for
an element of mass A, we can mathematically formulate
the expression as:
dA
= −aA
dt
Here, a is the decay rate constant. It is a property of
the element.
For a chain of 3 elements, where A disintegrates to
B and B disintegrates to C. The rate of change of mass
for the radioactive elements A and B is solely dependent
on their individual masses. Thus each element A, B and
C can be modeled as a separate compartment. Element
A can be studied as an independent compartment with
mass A having disintegration rate proportional to A.
For substanceB, at any instance of time, the total
mass present will be equal to the mass obtained from
∗ Electronic address: 201901421@daiict.ac.in
† Electronic address: 201901466@daiict.ac.in
substanceC because of its own radioactive property. For
substanceC, the rate of gain of it’s mass will be equal to
the rate of loss of mass in substanceB. We have assumed
the decay rates for substanceA and substanceB to be a
and b respectively. Thus, the mathematical model for
the radioactive decay of a chain of three elements can be
formulated a below:
dA
= −aA (2)
dt
dB
= aA − bB (3)
dt
dC
= bB (4)
dt
We will begin with the assumption that the initial mass
of substanceA is A0 and the initial mass of substanceB
and substanceC is 0.
Thus, the above system of equations can be solved and
observed for different values of A, a and b.
III. RESULTS
To numerically analyse the above proposed mathemat-
(1) ical model, the system of first order differential equations
are modeled with Euler’s method.
The numerical and analytical results are summarized
below:
Fig. 1 shows the typical evolution of the system of ra-
dioactive elements. We have assumed the decay con-
stants a=0.1s−1 and b=0.05s−1 . The inital mass of
substanceA(A0 ) is 100g and substanceB and substanceC
are nil initially. We observe, that element A decreases
exponentially. The element A constantly disintegrates
with rate a and it is not replenished by the radioactive
activity of any other element. Therefore A decreases
over time. The rate of decrease of A governed by the
anayltical solution of Eq. 2 predicts a similar exponen-
tial decay. The amount of substanceB increases steeply
initially, attains a maximum and then shows a gradual
decrease. substanceB is obtained because of the radioac-
tive decay of substanceA. Initially the mass of B is neg-
ligible, as a result the disintegration rate of B which is

FIG. 1: depicts the radioactive decay for a chain of elements
over time.
directly proportional to the mass of B is also negligible.
Moreover, the decay constant b is also significantly lower
than a. Hence, initially the inflow of mass into B from
A is much greater than the outflow. However, with the
progress of time, the inflow from A decreases exponen-
tially while, the outflow from B continues constantly and
therefore the net amount of B also shows a descent. Sub-
stanceC increases rapidly over time. As the amount of
substanceB increases, its radioactivity increases and as
a result amount of C also increases exponentially. The
growth rate of C is at all times dependent on the amount
of substanceB, after a time, the positive rate of C slows
down and shows linear characteristics. The substanceC
graph asymptotically approaches A0 .
A. Maximum Total Radioactivity
FIG. 2: depicts the total radioactive activity for elements A
and B for constant value b=0.7s−1 and different values of a.
Fig. 2 shows the relation between the time of maxi-
mum total radioactivity and decay rates. For a constant
value of b(b = 0.7s−1 ), we ran the simulation for differ-
2
ent values of a ranging from 0.1 to 1. Total radioactivity
at any instance of time is the total of the disintegrations
of substanceA and substanceB. It is given by aA + bB.
From our simulation, we observe that the peak of the
total radioactivity curve shifts to the left as a increases.
The two variables to consider in this simulation are a
and b. The disintegration rate of substanceA is depen-
dent on a. A small value of a implies a lower disintegra-
tion rate and vice versa. For a constant b, the disinte-
gration rate of substanceB is dependent its mass B. Now,
when a<b, we observe that initially, smaller amount of
A will be decomposed to B and B will have a disintegra-
tion rate proportional to this small inflow of mass. But
B has a higher decay constant and therefore a significant
proportion of it’s mass will decompose as soon as it is
received from A. Therefore in the first case, the net ra-
dioactivity will be lower due to the low decay constant
a and because of the constant low mass of B. Gradually,
the mass of B will increase, hence the no. of disinte-
grations will increase and the total radioactivity will rise
marginally to a peak value. When a>b, the initial dis-
integration rate of A will be the highest, and maximum
number of atoms will decay initially. Similarly, initially
B will have a higher inflow and as a direct consequence
have a high disintegration rate. Thus, in this case the
maxima of the total radioactivity graph will be higher
and closer to the origin.
B. Transient Equilibrium
FIG. 3: a=0.1, b=0.7 FIG. 4: a=1, b=0.7
The exact solution to the differential equation for the
rate of change of A with respect to time, is obtained as:
dA
= −aA
dt
dA
= −adt
A
Z A Z t
1
dA = a dt
A0 A 0
A
ln = −at
A0
 3

Therefore, we get the solution as: C. Secular Equilibrium

−at
A = A0 e (5)
Let us now take the decay rate of A i.e a to be very
We are given the equation: small compared to the decay rate of B i.e b, for a
aA0 −at chain of radioactive reactions where radium-226 decays
B= (e − e−bt ) (6) into radon-222 which further decays into polonium-218.
b−a
Here, our substanceA is Ra226 , substanceB is Rn222
Eq. 6 can be verified using Eq. 5 as below: and substanceC is P o218 . The decay rate of Ra226 is
dB aA0 d −at 0.00000117/da and decay rate of Rn222 is 0.181/da.
=( ) (e − e−bt )
dt b − a dt
Here, we have taken A0 = 300 and we see that when
dB aA0 a is very much smaller than b, from Eq. 5, e−at tends to
=( )[(−ae−at + be−bt ) + (be−at − be−at )] 1. This can be understood by expanding e−at in terms
dt b−a
of euler’s formula and neglecting the terms containing
dB aA0 a, hence we get A ≈ A0 and B ≈ aA b−a from Eq. 6 by
0

=( )[(b − a)e−at + b(e−bt − e−at ) neglecting e −bt −at

compared to e . That is, the amount
dt b−a
of both the substances remain almost constant as shown
dB dA in Fig. 5. This is known as secular equilibrium.
∴ = − bB
dt dt
For the case where a < b, we see that in Eq. 6, e−bt
will be negligible and can be ignored. Therefore, we can
rewrite the equation as:
aA0 −at
B= (e ) (7)
b−a
From Eq. 5, replacing the value of A in Eq. 7, we get:
B a
≈ (8)
A b−a
Therefore the condition for transient equilibrium is
verified. The simulation results for transient equilibrium FIG. 5: Radioactivity when a is very small compared to b.
are shown in Fig. 3. We see that after 20 seconds, the
ratio B/A maintains a nearly constant ratio of 0.167 When we plot the radioactivity graph for the above
which is numerically equal to b−a a
for a=1s−1 and chain of reactions for a very long period of time, we
−1
b=0.7s see that the amount of substanceA decreases, but the
amount of substanceB does not increase, this is because,
Fig. 4 shows the case for a>b. We have taken as a is very small compared to b, the amount of sub-
a=0.7s−1 and b=0.1s−1 . As we can see the ratio B/A stanceA that converts into substanceB over a very long
does not approach a fixed constant value over time. period of time, converts immediately into substanceC.
Hence transient equilibrium does not occur in this case. This is shown in Fig. 6.

To analytically derive our observation in Fig. 4, we

refer to Eq. 6.We can further solve this equation by
replacing the value of A from Eq. 5 as:
B a eat
= (1 − bt )
A b−a e

B a eat − ebt
= ( )
A a−b ebt
Since a>b, eat > ebt and therefore, the ebt in the numer-
ator can be ignored. On solving, we arrive at:
B a
= (e(a−b)t ) (9)
A a−b FIG. 6: Radioactivity when a is very small compared to b
Eq. 9 explains the plot obtained in the computer simula- (for a longer period of time.)
tion.
 4

D. Maximum mass of second substance in the
chain of reactions
From Eq. 6, we can find mass of substanceB at any
instance of time. To find the maximum mass of sub-
stanceB, we differentiate the equation as
Similarly, using the above analytical solutions, the
maximum mass of Radon-222 in the previously men-
tioned chain of reactions, i.e Radium-226 to Radon-222
and Radon-222 to Polonium-218 can be computed.
This is graphically shown below. Here, we have taken
A0 = 300 gms i.e the intial amount of Radium-226.

dB aA0 d −at
=( ) (e − e−bt )
dt b − a dt
dB
and take dt = 0. Hence,
a
e(a−b)tmax =
b

ln(a) − ln(b)
∴ tmax =
a−b
Using this, we get,
aA0 a a a b
Bmax = ( )[( ) b−a − ( ) b−a ] FIG. 8: Maximum mass of Radon-222
b−a b b
This can be graphically interpreted using the following
example of chain of reactions, where Bismuth-210 decays Hence, numerically as well as graphically, the maxi-
into Polonium-210 whch in turn decays into Lead-206 mum mass of Radon-222 is obtained at approximately
with decay constant of Bi210 = 0.0137/da and decay 66 days and the maximum mass is around 1.9 ∗ 10−3
constant of P o210 = 0.0051/da and initial amount of gms. This proves that our graphical model is very close
Bi210 = 10−8 gms. The below given graph shows the to the theoretical model.
maximum mass of Polonium-210 and the time at which
it occurs.

IV. CONCLUSIONS

In conclusion, we have studied a simple mathematical

FIG. 7: Maximum mass of Polonium-210
Using these values in the above equations, the max-
imum value of Polonium-210 and the time at which it
occurs match with the graphical values.
model of radioactive decay for a chain of elements. We
can conclude that a system of radioactive elements, can
be modeled efficiently with the help of the compartment
model. With the help of our mathematical model, we are
able to accurately predict and comment on the proper-
ties of the elements. We express that the maximum total
disintegration rate of the system and the time at which
this maximum total rate occurs is dependent on the de-
cay constants of the elements. Next, we comment on
the relations between the decay rates and make note of
the conditions for the occurrence of transient and secular
equilibrium. Lastly, we calculate the maximum mass of
the central element and the time at which this maxima
is obtained as a function of the decay rates a and b.