Tenured full pro­fes­sor, Zoheir Aboura, works on the mechan­i­cal behav­iour of com­pos­ite mate­ri­als at UTC’s Rober­val laboratory.

The laboratory’s rep­u­ta­tion in the field of mechan­i­cal behav­iour and the analy­sis of dam­age mech­a­nisms in com­pos­ite mate­ri­als has made it a world-class lead­ing author­i­ty in this area of research. This exper­tise has been built through numer­ous the­ses, as well as close col­lab­o­ra­tions with major indus­tri­al play­ers, fore­most among them we have Safran and its numer­ous sub­sidiaries, includ­ing Safran Air­craft Engines, Safran Com­pos­ites, Safran Ceram­ics and Safran Land­ing Sys­tems… “Our exper­tise in the field of dam­age-induced behav­iour of com­pos­ites has giv­en us excel­lent nation­al vis­i­bil­i­ty,” states Zoheir Aboura.

This rep­u­ta­tion led the CEA [French nation­al atom­ic ener­gy agency]- already work­ing along­side the Rober­val Lab­o­ra­to­ry on a the­sis in col­lab­o­ra­tion with MBDA and Pyromer­al Sys­tems — to pro­pose the cre­ation of a joint lab­o­ra­to­ry, mark­ing a new phase in this strate­gic partnership.

This joint lab­o­ra­to­ry, cre­at­ed with Dr. François Guil­let of the CEA and inau­gu­rat­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2025, is named the “Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Ceram­ic Matrix Com­pos­ite Mechan­ics” (MC2Lab). A “wall-less” lab­o­ra­to­ry which aims to strength­en and devel­op exper­tise in aca­d­e­m­ic and applied research on shared chal­lenges, focus­ing on two main themes:

• the mechan­ics of ceram­ic matrix com­pos­ite (CMC) mate­ri­als (test­ing, behav­iour, modelling),
• the fab­ri­ca­tion of pro­to­type CMC com­pos­ite parts to char­ac­ter­ize their mechan­i­cal behaviour.

The research focus­es in par­tic­u­lar on oxide-oxide ceram­ic com­pos­ites, cut­ting-edge mate­ri­als capa­ble of main­tain­ing excel­lent mechan­i­cal per­for­mance at very high temperatures—up to 1 000 °C – while resist­ing the effects of oxi­da­tion. These prop­er­ties make them prime can­di­dates for demand­ing indus­tri­al applications.

In this con­text, the Rober­val Lab­o­ra­to­ry lever­ages its exper­tise in exper­i­men­tal tech­niques and the analy­sis of dam­age mech­a­nisms under com­plex load­ing con­di­tions. For its part, the CEA con­tributes its mod­el­ling exper­tise, par­tic­u­lar­ly through the devel­op­ment of mate­r­i­al behav­iour laws.“ “The goal is to estab­lish an ongo­ing dia­logue between exper­i­men­tal test­ing and numer­i­cal cal­cu­la­tions in order to bet­ter under­stand and pre­dict the behav­iour of these mate­ri­als under extreme con­di­tions,” explains Zoheir Aboura.

Two joint PhD the­ses have already been launched to advance the under­stand­ing and mod­el­ling of ceram­ic matrix com­pos­ites. The first, super­vised by Prof. Alain Rassineux since Octo­ber 2025, focus­es on the mesoscale net­work of ceram­ic matrix lam­i­nates, a key step toward bet­ter rep­re­sent­ing the inter­nal struc­ture of these mate­ri­als in numer­i­cal models.

Une deux­ième thèse débutera en octo­bre 2026. Codirigée par les Pr Nico­las Buiron et Pierre Feis­sel, elle portera sur les sol­lic­i­ta­tions mul­ti­ax­i­ales appliquées aux com­pos­ites à matrice céramique. Pour men­er à bien ces travaux, le MC2Lab prévoit l’acquisition d’un hexa­pode, un dis­posi­tif expéri­men­tal capa­ble d’imposer simul­tané­ment plusieurs types de con­traintes.
A sec­ond the­sis will begin in Octo­ber 2026. Co-super­vised by Pro­fes­sors Nico­las Buiron and Pierre Feis­sel, it will focus on mul­ti­ax­i­al stress­es applied to ceram­ic matrix com­pos­ites. To car­ry out this work, the MC2Lab plans to acquire a hexa­pod, an exper­i­men­tal device capa­ble of apply­ing mul­ti­ple types of stress­es simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. “Until now, we test­ed mate­ri­als under ten­sion, tor­sion, or bend­ing sep­a­rate­ly. With the hexa­pod, we will be able to com­bine all these stress­es to observe their actu­al behav­iour and see if exist­ing mod­els can repro­duce them, or if they need to be updat­ed,” explains Zoheir Aboura.

A third the­sis, cur­rent­ly under dis­cus­sion between the two part­ners, could begin in Octo­ber 2026, con­firm­ing the momen­tum of research under­way on these mate­ri­als designed for extreme environments.

MC2Lab is ful­ly aligned with the Rober­val Laboratory’s devel­op­ment strat­e­gy, which focus­es on struc­tur­ing and sus­tain­able part­ner­ships. This approach is already illus­trat­ed by oth­er col­lab­o­ra­tions with var­i­ous part­ners, such as the joint lab­o­ra­to­ries Dim­exp with Delta­CAD, Fusemet­al with Arcelor­Mit­tal France, and CREM with CETIM.

“At Rober­val, we have been work­ing with indus­try over a long peri­od on short- or medi­um-term projects. Today, our pol­i­cy is to build long-term part­ner­ships so that we can plan for the future. The part­ner­ship with the CEA is ful­ly in line with this approach,” empha­sizes Zoheir Aboura.

For the CEA, the goal is to lever­age a lab­o­ra­to­ry with a strong mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing focus, com­ple­ment­ing its own exper­tise in mod­el­ling and the behav­iour­al laws of ceram­ic matrix mate­ri­als. The orga­ni­za­tion also pos­sess­es state-of-the-art exper­i­men­tal facil­i­ties that com­ple­ment those at Rober­val. These include a large-scale tomo­graph capa­ble of accom­mo­dat­ing test­ing machines, offer­ing the abil­i­ty to observe mate­ri­als under real-world stress con­di­tions, as well as a high-tem­per­a­ture nanoindenter.

“This equip­ment opens up very promis­ing prospects. Our ambi­tion is there­fore to joint­ly devel­op, over the long term, our knowl­edge of these mate­ri­als by pool­ing our resources and human cap­i­tal,” con­cludes Zoheir Aboura.

This approach illus­trates the evo­lu­tion of col­lab­o­ra­tive research toward more inte­grat­ed and for­ward-look­ing part­ner­ships, serv­ing the objec­tive of sci­en­tif­ic and indus­tri­al inno­va­tion. Indeed, the poten­tial appli­ca­tions are vast and strate­gic. These mate­ri­als are of inter­est to demand­ing sec­tors such as space, aero­nau­tics, civ­il nuclear pow­er, civ­il engi­neer­ing, and even com­pet­i­tive motor­sports— all which fields hav­ing in com­mon resis­tance to extreme con­di­tions which is a major challenge.

MSD