Presentation of the French consortium GdR “TherMatHT”
The French research consortium TherMatHT (GDR CNRS 3584) « Thermodynamique des Matériaux à Haute Température (Material Thermodynamics at High Temperatures)« was created in January 2013. This structure, related to the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), is a scientific organization evaluated every 4 years at a national level. By essence, it aims to gather francophone researchers, both academic and industrial, interested in the field of material thermodynamics, including in high temperature environments. Following its first positive and encouraging evaluation in 2016, the GdR TherMatHT is now well grounded at the French scale, and has been renewed so far until 2021!
As a laboratory-without-walls, this consortium gathers nearly 150 people from 50 different academic laboratories and industrial research centers disseminated on the French territory.
The first period following its creation, from 2013 to 2017, has been dedicated to federate the material thermodynamics community in France, with the aim to provide common working tools and share good practice methodologies, organize annual seminars, set up two dedicated summer schools in 2015 and 2017, and establish thematic subgroups. The themes of such subgroups are regularly revised so as to respond to expressed specific needs from the community. So far, 4 such subgroups have been active, dedicated to silicon carbide, thermodynamics of glasses, oxycarbides, and high-temperature analysis techniques. Other emerging domains are currently also in discussion.
TherMatHT gathers both experimentalists and computational materials scientists, active in relation to a variety of socio-economical domains such as automotive, aeronautics, nuclear, construction, and healthcare industries, among others. It has established relationships with leading organizations/industrial groups such as Saint-Gobain, SAFRAN, Lafarge-Holcim, ONERA, IRSN, CEA…
At an international level, the GdR TherMatHT is the French representative within the international Alloy Phase Diagram International Commission (APDIC, http://www.apdic.info/) and is a partner organization of the ThermoCon thermodynamics consortium (https://www.thermocon.org/) established at the initiative of Alexandra Navrotsky from UC Davis, USA.