Joy Fan

Yuqiao (Joy) Fan joined ORNL as an R&D Associate staff researcher in February 2022. Within the Blanket and Fuel Cycle Group, her primary research area is in liquid metal (LM) flow study in DCLL (Dual-Coolant Lead-Lithium) blanket, coupling Navier-Stokes equations with electromagnetic equations for investigation of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) flow phenomena. Her work focuses on optimizing design of the LM feeding geometry for the breeding blanket under different magnetic field strengths. She is also conducting a feasibility study on a novel blanket candidate, Toroidally Symmetric Lead Lithium blanket, by demonstrating lower MHD pressure drop under significant magnetic fields. Starting from 2023, she began to integrate various physics (MHD, conjugated heat transfer, mass transfer, two-phase, etc.) to effectively tackle cutting-edge challenges related to plasma-facing components and LM corrosion issues.

Besides the blanket research, Joy is also involved in the fuel cycle development projects. Through high-fidelity Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations, she is optimizing the cryogenic hydrogen extruder design for leakage-reduced fuel injection into the fusion reactors. This hydrogen extrusion modeling will contribute to ITER’s success.

Moreover, Joy has been working on helium visualization for cooling the heated first wall of the fusion blanket. Her responsibilities include CFD modeling and working closely with experimentalists and advance manufacturing staff on the design and fabrication of the helium flow channel. Notably, Joy was featured by multiple media in “Fusion Experts Address Cooling Strategies for Fusion Fuel Cycle” for this research.

Joy is an expert in CFD and high-performance computing, especially in interface capturing two-phase flow in Direct Numerical Simulations. She is well-versed in CFD pre-processing, particularly at high-quality mesh design for complicated geometries. She is also a creative CFD code developer. In her Ph.D. dissertation, she designed and programmed a PID controller to accurately and robustly control the flow rates in two-phase regimes, which was applied to predict counter current flow limitation (CCFL) occurrence, a safety concern in nuclear reactor severe accidents.

Before her staff career at ORNL, she already worked in Advanced Reactor Engineering and Development Section at ORNL in 2019 as an intern, managed by ORISE (Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education). Due to her extraordinary performance, she was featured by ORISE in the column of “What’s it like Being an ORISE STEM Researcher”.