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Ling Zou

Group Manager, System Analysis & Methods

Biography

Ling Zou joined Argonne National Laboratory in 2019 as a Principal Nuclear Engineer in the Nuclear Science and Engineering Division, where he is contributing to a variety of projects mainly in the field of nuclear reactor thermal-hydraulics. As one of the main code developers of Argonne’s award-winning nuclear reactor safety analysis code, SAM, he has made contributions to SAM code development and its applications in the analyses of various types of advanced reactor designs. He also leads other activities to support the Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) program and ARPA-E’s Modeling-Enhanced Innovations Trailblazing Nuclear Energy Reinvigoration (MEITNER) program. At Argonne, he also works with external collaborators from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Kairos Power, HolosGen, etc.

Before joining Argonne, Dr. Ling Zou worked at Idaho National Laboratory as a staff and then senior staff scientist. At Idaho, he led/contributed to the development of many thermal-hydraulics analysis computer codes, including Pronghorn, SASQUATCH (NQA-1), R6, and RELAP-7. At Idaho, he also developed a strong research interest in two-phase flow modeling and simulation, and numerical methods for solving two-phase flow problems, a research experience he enjoyed the most and still enjoys till now.

Before obtaining his PhD’s degree and then moving to Idaho, he spent a few years with Caterpillar Inc. at its Champaign Simulation Center (CSC), where he worked as a student intern and then a full-time staff engineer. As a CFD analyst at Caterpillar, he gained a lot of CFD analysis experience from many different projects, such as impeller pump simulation and design, valve manifolds cavitation, engine jacket water cooling, underhood thermal management, among many other fun projects.

He has authored and co-authored more than 120 publications, including journal articles, peer-reviewed conference papers, and technical reports.

    Education:

    • 2010: Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)
    • 2003: Master in Nuclear Engineering from China Institute of Atomic Energy (CIAE), Beijing, China.
    • 2000: Bachelor in Engineering Physics from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.

    Links:

    Selected publications:

    Journal articles

    Conference papers

    • Prasad Vegendla, Rui Hu and Ling Zou, CFD Model Validation for a Benchmark Data of Texas A&M 1/16TH Scaled VHTR Upper Plenum”, Proceedings of the ASME 2020 Verification and Validation Symposium, VVS2020, May 20-22, 2020, Virtual, Online.
    • Anton Moisseytsev, et al., Helium Brayton Cycle Design and Analysis for the Holos-Quad Micro Reactor,” 2020 ANS Virtual Winter Meeting, November 16–19, 2020, Virtual, Online.
    • Ling Zou and Rui Hu, Validation of SAM using CIET Experimental Data”, ANS Winter Meeting & Expo, Washington, DC, November 17-21, 2019
    • Guojun Hu, Ling Zou, and Tomasz Kozlowski, Effect of discretization error on the quantification of model uncertainty in two-phase flow simulations”, Best Estimate Plus Uncertainty International Conference (BEPU 2018), Lucca, Italy, May 13-19, 2018.
    • Ling Zou, Haihua Zhao, Hongbin Zhang, and Caleb S. Brooks, A Revisit to the Hicks’ Hyperbolic Two-pressure Two-phase Flow Model”, The 17th International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics (NURETH-17), Xi’an, China, September 3-8, 2017

    Technical reports

    • Explicit Modeling of Pebble Temperature in the Porous-medium Framework for Pebble-bed Reactors Applications, ANL/NSE-21/9, March 2021, Argonne National Laboratory.
    • Development of a Reference Model for Molten-Salt- Cooled Pebble-Bed Reactor Using SAM, ANL/NSE-20/31, September 2020, Argonne National Laboratory.
    • Development and Validation of SAM Multi-dimensional Flow Model for Thermal Mixing and Stratification Modeling, ANL/NSE-20/19, June 2020, Argonne National Laboratory.