The Ohio State University

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a Funding Opportunity Announcement to support faculty development in Nuclear Engineering in February 2008.  In response to this Announcement, Professor Tunc Aldemir and Assistant Professor Xiaodong Sun submitted a successful proposal to the U.S. NRC. As a result, Ohio State's Nuclear Engineering Program has been awarded $450,000 to primarily help support Professor Sun's research.  Ohio State will also provide $150,000 matching funds over a three-year period.

The NRC's Faculty Development Grant Program recognizes the need to attract and retain highly-qualified individuals in academic teaching careers.  The grants specifically target probationary, tenure-track faculty during the first six years of their career in the academic areas of nuclear engineering, health physics, and radiochemistry. The program intends to provide support to enable junior faculty to enhance their careers as professors and researchers.

The new faculty development grant will help Sun continue the development of research programs in the reactor thermal hydraulics area.  Two research activities will be carried out under the support of this grant, including the implementation of an interfacial area transport equation into a computational fluid dynamics code and investigation of turbulence in gas-liquid two-phase flows in flow regimes beyond bubbly flow.  The objectives of these activities are to gain a better understanding of gas-liquid two-phase flows and to develop a mechanistic predictive tool for flow behaviors, both of which are essential for the power up rate and safety margin characterization of light water nuclear reactors.