Bremsstrahlung production from 10–30 MeV electrons incident on thick targets: Monte Carlo simulation with penelope

•Bremsstrahlung emission by MeV electrons is simulated with the penelope code.•Simulated photon fluences, yields and mean energies are compared to experimental data.•Electron beams with 10 to 30 MeV and detection angles from 0 to 90°are considered.•The parameters C1 and C2 should not be larger than 0.01 to describe the data.•No significant improvement is found with C1 and C2 smaller than 0.01.