Leading thermal hydraulics conference recognized NC State’s Multiphase Research Group

At the 18th International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics (NURETH-18), held this August 2019 in Portland OR, there was strong participation by NC State’s Nuclear Engineering faculty, graduate students and alumni.
Dr. Bolotnov’s current and former students gave 5 oral presentations. They were authored by Dr. Jun Fang (PhD in 2016), Dr. Mengnan Li (PhD in 2019) as well as current doctoral students Joseph Cambareri, Nadish Saini and Matthew Zimmer. In addition, Dr. Jun Fang presented an invited lecture on “Interface Tracking Simulations of Gas-Liquid Two-phase Flows” during the conference workshop on turbulence modeling.

Matthew Zimmer was selected as 1 of 3 recipients of the conference’s Young Professional Award. This award is based on technical merits of the paper and is awarded to authors who qualify as American Nuclear Society (ANS) young members. It was entitled “Exploring two-phase flow regime transition mechanisms using high resolution virtual experiments”.

Approximately 15% of the best papers in the conference proceedings will be published in special issues of leading nuclear engineering journals. This year, all 5 contributions co-authored by Dr. Bolotnov received this prestigious publishing invitation. This honor continues the tradition of excellence in thermal-hydraulics research at NC State University, and in particular, NURETH participation. At NURETH-17 in Xi’an China, 3 of the 3 papers from the multiphase research group were invited for journal publication.

During the next year, 2 invited papers will be published in the peer-reviewed Nuclear Science and Engineering –

  • “Annular Flow Simulation Supported by Iterative In-Memory Mesh Adaptation” by J. Fang, C. Smith, I.A. Bolotnov, R. Balakrishnan, K.E. Jansen
  • “Exploring two-phase flow regime transition mechanisms using high resolution virtual experiments” by M.D. Zimmer and I.A. Bolotnov.

The other 3 invited papers will be published in Nuclear Engineering and Design –

  • “Interface Tracking Simulations of droplet interaction with spacer grids under DFFB conditions” by N. Saini and I.A. Bolotnov
  • “Nucleate Boiling Simulation using Interface Tracking Method — Bubble Departure diameter and Bubble Release Frequency” by M. Li and I.A. Bolotnov
  • “Interface Tracking Simulations of Bubble Population Effects in PWR Subchannels” by J.J. Cambareri and I.A. Bolotnov

NURETH is the premier research meeting for nuclear thermal-hydraulics and is co-sponsored by the American Nuclear Society (ANS). It was established in 1980 and is held every 2 years alternating between North America, Europe and Asia. NURETH celebrates its 40th anniversary at the next topical meeting.