Wen-Chi Cheng

Wen-Chi Cheng is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in the Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering (NPRE) department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He started the PhD program at NPRE and joined Socio-Technical Risk Analysis (SoTeRiA) Research Laboratory, supervised by Dr. Zahra Mohaghegh, in 2016. He got the bachelor’s and master’s degree at National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) at Taiwan. The topic of the research program he did in NTHU focuses on the CFD investigation in the Dome section of the PWR. The goal for this research was to determine the possibility of primary water stress corrosion cracking (PWSCC). He also got the opportunity to be as visiting student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) during his masters. He joined the Integrated Research Project (IRP) led by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of California, Berkeley (UCB) and University of Wisconsin (UW) and funded by U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). His mission done at MIT was CFD analysis for asymmetric power generation in Fluoride salt-cooled High-temperature Test Reactor (FHTR). After finishing the Master program, he worked at the Department of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering in City University of Hong Kong as the Research Assistant.

His current research is focusing on developing a Probabilistic Physics-of-Failure model for physical degradation mechanisms of nuclear power plant piping in both conventional and advanced reactors. In his research, a finite element analysis model for thermal fatigue of piping is developed and coupled with a renewal process model to consider the impact of maintenance activities.