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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Remembering ANS member Gil Brown
Brown
The nuclear community is mourning the loss of Gilbert Brown, who passed away on July 11 at the age of 77 following a battle with cancer.
Brown, an American Nuclear Society Fellow and an ANS member for nearly 50 years, joined the faculty at Lowell Technological Institute—now the University of Massachusetts–Lowell—in 1973 and remained there for the rest of his career. He eventually became director of the UMass Lowell nuclear engineering program. After his retirement, he remained an emeritus professor at the university.
Sukesh Aghara, chair of the Nuclear Engineering Department Heads Organization, noted in an email to NEDHO members and others that “Gil was a relentless advocate for nuclear energy and a deeply respected member of our professional community. He was also a kind and generous friend—and one of the reasons I ended up at UMass Lowell. He served the university with great dedication. . . . Within NEDHO, Gil was a steady presence and served for many years as our treasurer. His contributions to nuclear engineering education and to this community will be dearly missed.”
Bin Han, Bao-Wen Yang, Cen Wei, Yudong Zha
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 1 | January-February 2019 | Pages 68-76
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1506658
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The spacer grid is one of the most important parts of a fuel assembly for enhancing thermal-hydraulic performance. The mixing vane is a critical component of the spacer grid (or mixing vane grid) to produce lateral flow, turbulence, vortex, and other mixing mechanisms downstream of the grid. The design and arrangement of mixing vanes could influence the flow condition downstream, especially the lateral flow and vortex surrounding the rod bundle, which directly affect not only the hydraulics and heat transfer but also the critical heat flux. Understanding fundamental mixing characteristics is of great importance for fuel assembly design. Instead of using complicated geometries, this paper studies the lateral flow velocity and vortex in a simple 2 × 1 channel with a spacer grid in order to obtain the behavior of a single mixing vane and its effect on the downstream lateral velocity and vortex. Then, the effect of mixing vane arrangements on pressure drop is studied by researching the lateral velocity and vortex in the 2 × 1 channel with two mixing vanes. Several indexes that could reflect the mixing characteristics, such as lateral velocity and vortex, are introduced to assess the performance of the mixing vanes. Because of the presence of walls in both the experiment and the simulation, the lateral flow will reflect upon the impact of the obstruction walls or rods, which would cause vortex rotation. Rotation time and flow pattern are also studied in this paper. Qualitative and quantitative analyses are carried out to obtain the lateral velocity, the vortex angle, and its period of rotation. This work may be applied to the design and optimization of mixing vanes.
