Materials and Structures - MAS

This field covers all research and development whose ultimate purpose is the use of materials and structures in the Aerospace and Defense domain. In this field, the major challenge remains managing mechanical resistance throughout the service life of equipment, components and structures. To this end, the multi-physical environment of the latter needs to be taken into account. Multifunctional materials are also part of the MAS field of research.

The scientific approach of ONERA starts on the finest of scales, for understanding the elementary mechanisms at play and determining from them the key models and parameters. The approach to changing scales, and observing and characterizing each of them, plays a key role in this.

 

 

 

The second major line of research concerns the development of new materials, the construction of laws of behavior with a view to their industrial utilization, and the modeling of aging, damage, fatigue and rupture phenomena. This needs to be combined with methods of observation, in particular in field theory, and the development of in-service monitoring or manufacturing-process control.

 

 

 

 

The use of these materials by industry in complex, optimized structures, subject to extremely severe environments of use, combined with ever more stringent security or dependability requirements, opens up a final avenue of research concerning the structures themselves. Aerodynamic, thermal and electromagnetic couplings need to be taken into account, and the modeling and numerical simulation of these couplings, requiring high-performance calculation and, of course, large-scale testing, constitute the third major line of research for Materials and Structures. The development of the link between calculation and testing is central to this.

 

 

Scientific topics of the Materials and Structures domain

The MAS domain covers 8 scientific topics spread across 3 departments of ONERA.

Topics	Scientific Department	References (CNU - CoNRS)
Low dimensional materials	DMAS	28, 33 - 5
Innovative structural materials	DMAS	60 - 9
Physics and mechanical behaviour of materials: from atomic to microstructural scales	DMAS	28, 60 - 5, 9
Multi-scale and multi-physic modeling of materials and characterisation methods	DMAS	60 - 9
Complex macroscopic phenomena modelling and characterisation methods	DMAS	60 - 9
Structural mechanics, design and optimisation	DMAS	60 - 9
Architectured and multifunctional materials	DMAS-DMPE	60 - 9
Aeroelasticity	DAAA	60 - 9, 10