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Case Study: Conjugate Heat Transfer Simulation for a Fuel Element of an Experimental Nuclear Reactor

NERS researchers Professor Brendan Kochunas and Dr. Yuxuan Liu have created a free online learning resource for those wanting to learn how to do engineering analysis for a nuclear reactor fuel element with ANSYS.

This case study, developed by the NERS researchers, Professor Brendan Kochunas and Dr. Yuxuan Liu, demonstrates how to perform conjugate heat transfer analysis for a fuel element in an experimental nuclear reactor. The tutorial includes instructions for geometry importing and simplification, meshing, simulation, and post-processing. 

The link for the case study is: https://www.ansys.com/academic/educators/education-resources/conjugate-heat-transfer-simulation-for-a-fuel-element-of-an-experimental-nuclear-reactor

This case study is part of a larger project focused on the development of an eXtended Reality (XR) based nuclear reactor laboratory course that will enable students to walk around a control room and reactor floor, and interact with the control panel to perform the experiments. Ansys real-time models will enable a virtual reactor with all major field quantities available in real time for educational purposes.

This project was part of an ADUE grant – more information here: https://adue.engin.umich.edu/engineering-simulation/