Welcome to the CARPL home page!

Computation Applied Reactor Physics Laboratory (CARPL) is centralized on developing efficient and accurate computational methods on fission reactor and other nuclear applications. We also utilize various state-of-the-art computer codes to address contingent and challenging problems in nuclear applications by performing multi-scale multi-physics integrated computational modeling and simulation.

Lab Director and Contact:

Education

• Ph.D., Nuclear Engineering, Department of Nuclear Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX
  Dissertation: Advances in Inverse Transport Methods and Applications to Neutron Tomography, and defense presentation.
• M.E., Nuclear Engineering, Department of Nuclear Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX
• M.S.E., Engineering Physics, Department of Engineering Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
• B.S., Engineering Physics, Department of Engineering Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

Professional Experience

• July 2023 ~ Present
  Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA
• Aug. 2017 ~ June 2023
  Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA
• May 2014 ~ Aug. 2017
  Nuclear Engineer, NIST Center for Neutron Research, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
  Research Associate, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
• Jan. 2013 ~ April 2014
  Post-doctoral Research Associate, School of Nuclear Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
• Oct. 2010 ~ Dec. 2012
  Post-doctoral Research Associate, Department of Nuclear Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC

Lab Capabilities: CARPL leads substantial computational efforts in nuclear reactor analysis design. For neutronics analysis, the team has access to Monte Carlo codes such as MCNP, Serpent, OpenMC, SCALE modules, as well as deterministic codes such as CASMO/CMSLink/SIMULATE, PARCS, PARTISN, Rattlesnake/MAMMOTH and MC2-3/DIF3D/DIF3D-K/REBUS-3.  For thermal-hydraulics and safety analysis, the team has access to system level codes such as RELAP5-3D, PLTEMP4.2/PARET7.5, SAS (SAS4A/SASSYS-1), SAM,  RETRAN,  as well as CFD codes such as OpenFOAM and FLUENT, etc.