Dr. Zeyun Wu
Assistant Professor
Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering
Virginia Commonwealth University

Abstract

Design and analysis of advanced nuclear reactors poses many new and unique challenges with more stringent operation and safety requirements. Reactor physics, the backbone area in nuclear engineering that deals with the neutronics aspect of a nuclear reactor and its associated components, plays a vital role in the reactor design and analysis. The principle task of the reactor physicist is to predict a detailed yet macroscopic-level neutron behavior in a reactor core at various conditions. Currently, this task can be accomplished via many state-of-the-art numerical modeling and simulation techniques which rely heavily on advanced computational hardware and computational methodologies. Though great strides have been achieved in developing computational tools for modeling realistic reactor physics problems, the current methodologies will most likely lack the higher efficiency and fidelity requirements needed to address the new design and operational challenges. Future reactor designs will thus favor new simulation paradigms. The purpose of this talk is to provide an overview of the challenges faced by reactor physics modeling and simulations, and summarize the speaker’s recent research activities that are pertaining to innovative solutions based on advanced data science analytics and machine learning approaches in reactor applications.

Biography

Dr. Zeyun Wu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering at the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and directs the computational reactor physics research group at VCU.  Dr. Wu earned his B.S. and M.S.E. degrees in Engineering Physics from Tsinghua University in China, and Ph.D. degree in Nuclear Engineering from Texas A&M University.  Prior to joining VCU as a faculty member, Dr. Wu worked as Nuclear Engineering Researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).  Before NIST, Dr. Wu worked as postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Nuclear Engineering at North Carolina State University for two years, and in the School of Nuclear Engineering at Purdue University for another fourteen months. Dr. Wu’s research interests encompass reactor physics, advanced reactor design and analysis, computational methods on neutron transport, uncertainty and sensitivity analysis, inverse transport problem, advanced data analytics and machine learning, etc.

Thursday, January 27. 2022
4:00 pm seminar

Hybrid Option  (Speaker is remote)

zoom (link upon request)
or
Room 1202 Burlington Labs