This master is a training in materials mechanics. This discipline aims to establish the relationships between the process, the material, its microstructure and its mechanical properties for advanced industrial applications and innovative processes. Today, most systems (airplanes, trains, power plants, etc...) are composite assemblies of various materials (metals, polymers, ceramics). The design and production of such systems require a good knowledge of the general principles governing the behaviour of materials.

Figure 1: Front view of a CFM56 engine, TA6V titanium alloy FAN vanes

Indeed, major technological evolutions generally involve the introduction of new materials or the appearance of new manufacturing processes allowing the creation of new objects, more resistant, more durable, lighter, etc... These revolutions have punctuated our history, from the age of cut stone to the Bronze Age, the rise of the steel industry, plastics, composite materials and today bio and nano-materials...

If over time, the triptych process-material-product has always been optimised, it is only in recent years that this optimisation has been carried out on the basis of scientific, robust and efficient methods. The development of composite materials has most probably paved the way for the formalization of the relationships between the process, the microstructure of the material and its mechanical properties. But today, it is a general approach in materials mechanics, which applies to a wide variety of materials (polymers, metals, foams, ceramics, glass, composites, elastomers, shape memory alloys, etc.).

Figure 2: Structural materials with high energy absorption capacity developed for shock and impact applications: nida, aluminium foams and stacking of hollow nickel balls

The wide variety of materials used in the industry, as well as the hardening of the conditions of use (increased service life, variable temperature, aggressive environment, etc...) makes it necessary to define generic and robust modeling strategies.