Min Long, Ph.D.

Bio

Our group is in the Department of Computer Science, College of Engineering, as a part of Computing program (including Ph.D.) at the Boise State University.

Dr. Long is also an affiliated faculty to the Center for Advanced Energy Studies (CAES), at Idaho National Laboratory (INL).

Sponsored by DOE, INL, CAES and BSU, our research focuses on:

• Nuclear materials modeling in multi length scales, including phase-field modeling (MOOSE/MARMOT) and engineering scale modeling (MOOSE/BISON).
• Microstructural evolution of materials in nuclear fuel pellets (UO2, U3Si2), cladding (Zr)
• Microstructural evolution of materials in additive manufactured parts (stainless steel) in nuclear reactors.
• Scientific programming, high-performance computing.
• Data science in fundamental science.
• Hydrodynamics (HD) and magnetohydrodynamics (MHD).
• Nuclear astrophysics, plasma, accretion, jets and outflow, galactic black holes.

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Education

• Ph.D., Astrophysics, Department of Astronomy, Cornell University (2008.5)
• M.Sc., Astrophysics, Department of Astronomy, Nanjing University, China (2001.6)
• B.S., Astronomy, Department of Astronomy, Nanjing University, China (1999.6)

Research Overview

My research interests focus on computational science and engineering, i.e., understanding complex phenomena in science and engineering by using computational methods, especially those problems with multiphysics processes. A number of projects in these area are carried out in alignment with BSU’s best interests and my personal interests.

Computational Nuclear Material Science

The evolution of microstructures in polycrystalline fuel pellets in irradiated environment are complex and significantly influences fuel performance by changing thermal conductivity and power output of the reactor. To investigate such structures like fission bubbles, void vacancies, nucleations, cracks and so on, we carry out very challenging multiscale simulations from DFT (with collaborators), MD, Phase-field method to engineering scale modeling for an integrated picture of the evolution.

CFD in Astrophysics

Accretion is one principal source of power in the universe. It extracts gravitational energy from inflowing matter and launches kinetic jets, winds and outflows as well radiations into the space. The inflowing matter loses its angular momentum due to fluid viscosity or magnetic interaction between the stars and the accretion matter, and ends up on the central stars. Accretion phenomena are highly complex, non-linear and involve many microphysics processes and thus raise more questions than traditional analytical methods can answer. We use CFD codes like FLASH, Athena++ for high-fidelity 2D/3D simulations of accretion onto a central object including blackhole.