Responses of surface and underground scintillation detectors of Yakutsk array are calculated for showers initiated by primary particles with energy E0>=1.0E17 eV within the frameworks of QGSJet01 QGSIIJet-II-04, SIBYLL-2.1 and EPOS-LHC hadron interac
tion models. A new estimation of E0 is obtained with the use of various methods. The resulting energy is lower compared to the obtained with earlier method by factor ~1.33.
We analyse a sample of 33 extensive air showers (EAS) with estimated primary energies above 2cdot 10^{19} eV and high-quality muon data recorded by the Yakutsk EAS array. We compare, event-by-event, the observed muon density to that expected from COR
SIKA simulations for primary protons and iron, using SIBYLL and EPOS hadronic interaction models. The study suggests the presence of two distinct hadronic components, ``light and ``heavy. Simulations with EPOS are in a good agreement with the expected composition in which the light component corresponds to protons and the heavy component to iron-like nuclei. With SYBILL, simulated muon densities for iron primaries are a factor of sim 1.5 less than those observed for the heavy component, for the same electromagnetic signal. Assuming two-component proton-iron composition and the EPOS model, the fraction of protons with energies E>10^{19} eV is 0.52^{+0.19}_{-0.20} at 95% confidence level.
