ESTIMATE OF THE CHEMICAL-COMPOSITION OF COSMIC-RAYS FROM A MULTIFRACTAL MOMENTS ANALYSIS OF THE LATERAL PARTICLE DISTRIBUTIONS IN THE CORE OF HIGH-ENERGY EAS

The central detector of the KASCADE experiment, which is focused to in vestigate the chemical composition of primary cosmic rays by EAS obser vations in the energy range of 10(14) eV to 10(17) eV, is able to obse rve the density distributions of the EAS components in the shower core , in particular of the muons by large-area position-sensitive multiwir e proportional chambers (MWPC), installed below an iron sampling calor imeter (approximate to 1000 g/cm(2) Fe) used for hadron measurements. Using a method based on the determination of multifractal moments the appearance of the density distributions of the EAS core in the MWPC ha s been analyzed. Results with EAS simulations indicate distinct signat ures for the mass of the primary. We communicate first results extract ed from measurements with the MWPC combined with measurements of the e nergy deposit in the timing and trigger facility (segmented scintillat ion detector plane as third active layer of the calorimeter) of the KA SCADE central detector.