NSE’s Yu-Jou Wang wins 2024 Young Professional Thermal Hydraulics Research Competition
MIT postdoctoral associate Yu-Jou Wang won the Young Professional Thermal-Hydraulic Research Competition at the 2024 American Nuclear Society Winter Meeting.
The winning paper “A Dynamic Turbulence Tracking Approach for Uncertainty Quantification of URANS CFD Models”, is co-authored with MIT’s Professor Emilio Baglietto.
A critical challenge in reactor design and licensing has been how to improve confidence in simulation results in the absence of operational experience and experimental data. Wang's winning paper presents a computational framework addressing this issue. The framework is designed to quantify uncertainty in the model for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) under transient conditions. It is able to successfully identify regions of large sources of error, providing valuable insights into the quality of CFD simulations. The frameworks uses a dynamic turbulence tracking approach in which local turbulence characteristics identify spatiotemporal variability of model uncertainty
This body of work provides an innovative approach to testing the assumptions underlying tools and improving the credibility of simulation results, effectively bridging the gap between computational science and real-world reactor applications.
Established in 2006, the professional development session is designed to enhance the technical writing and presentation skills of young professionals working in the area of Thermal Hydraulics through preparation and presentation of a summary related to the Thermal Hydraulics profession. The participants are evaluated on the originality of research, the overall contributions, the quality of the summary, and the quality of the presentation.
Wang completed her doctoral work at MIT in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT. She received a BS in Engineering and System Science and an MS in Nuclear Engineering from the National Tsing-Hua University, Taiwan.
November 2024
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