Joy Fan

Bio

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 is currently a co-investigator in the LDRD project, “Predictive modeling of Helium flow with Validation.” Her responsibilities include CFD modeling of the helium cooling performance at the heated first wall of the fusion blanket. She also works 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”.

Awards

PI, NERSC Allocation Year 2023 and 2024 DOE Mission Science Allocation Award, “Liquid metal plasma-facing component”

Co-PI, Laboratory Directed Research and Development (Fiscal Year 2022-2023), “Predictive modeling of Helium flow with validation”, also awarded a third-year extension for Fiscal Year 2024

Finalist, Your Science in a Nutshell competition 2023, “Squeezing better performance out of fusion reactors”

Best Talk in Nuclear Energy, the People’s Choice Award during 2023 ORPA Research Symposium, “Helium Flow Visualization Simulation for Fusion Reactor Blanket First Wall Cooling”

Education

Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering     North Carolina State University                                  summa cum laude

M.S.E. in Nuclear Engineering   University of Michigan, Ann Arbor                              cum laude

B.E. in Nuclear Engineering       Xi’an Jiaotong University                                              Rank: 1/94

Visiting Student                          Hong Kong University of Science and Technology   Grades: A, A+

Professional Service

Currently contributing to the organization and preparation of ISFNT-16, 2025

Judge for GEM Tech Talk Competition 2023, invited by Office of Research Excellence at ORNL
 

Professional Affiliations

Member of American Nuclear Society (ANS) since 2018
Member of American Physical Society (APS) since 2023

Trademarks and Patents

Awarded in Aug. 2014, with Patent No. ZL201420436054.8: the experimental system for studying the bottleneck effect, including an adjustable sized bottleneck, the supporting shelf and the driving system.

Publications

Other Publications