Yang Liu

Yang Liu is a graduate student in nuclear science and engineering whose research investigates the boiling crisis mechanism through integrated high-speed diagnostics and MATLAB-based modeling. Rapid power excursions in nuclear reactors can trigger critical heat flux, leading to irreversible vapor layer formation and fuel damage. She develops a coupled infrared thermometry and high-speed video analysis pipeline in MATLAB to reconstruct time-resolved temperature and heat flux fields at the bubble scale. The pipeline segments high-speed video data into vapor, liquid, and microlayer regions to quantify nucleation site density, bubble dynamics, and interfacial evolution. Yang also developed a super-resolution temperature reconstruction methodology using phase detection from video as boundary conditions for transient conduction models. As a MathWorks Fellow, Yang will extend this framework to incorporate CNN and LSTM architectures for predicting CHF onset from synchronized thermal and acoustic signals. Her research offers new possibilities for understanding and preventing boiling crisis in transient reactor conditions.