Title: Sensitivity, Uncertainty, and Adaptive Simulation Methodologies for Large-Scale Speaker:
Hany S. Abdel-Khalik, Assistant Professor of Nuclear Engineering North Carolina Date/Time: November 12, 2009, 10:00 a.m. Location: CSRI Building, Room 95 (Sandia NM) Brief Abstract: This talk will provide an overview of the speaker’s recent research activities on the development of advanced sensitivity, uncertainty, and adaptive simulation methodologies for complex, large scale, computational models. These methodologies have been identified by the nuclear engineering community to be integral components of next generation simulation tools. Such simulation tools are expected to play a major role in assisting the design and evaluation of advanced nuclear reactor technologies; thereby minimizing the reliance on expensive experimentation. Simulation tools must be able to not only produce best estimate predictions of reactor states; but also provide insights as to areas where further research and development efforts should be prioritized – these goals can be achieved through the use of sensitivity, uncertainty, and adaptive simulation-type analyses. Currently, systematic execution of these analyses for typical reactor calculations is intractable due to the prohibitive computational complexities and the voluminous size of input and output data streams. While we recognize that major advances have been made in these fields, the approach developed in this research places a premium on minimizing the computational overhead and prioritizes the need to perform such calculations on a routine basis with best estimate calculations for a wide class of reactor performance metrics. Biosketch: Hany Abdel-Khalik received his undergraduate degree (graduating college valedictorian) in nuclear engineering from Alexandria University (Egypt) in 2000. He received his Ph.D. from North Carolina State University (NCSU) in 2004 in the area of computational reactor physics focusing on the development of innovative sensitivity, uncertainty, and inverse methods to enhance the accuracy of nuclear reactor calculations. After graduation, he joined the reactor analysis methods group at AREVA-NP’s PWR Engineering Unit. He returned to NCSU in 2006, where he now holds the position of assistant professor in the department of nuclear engineering. His position is jointly supported by NCSU and Idaho National Laboratory. CSRI POC: Brian Adams, (505) 284-8845 |