An ECI Conference Series
May 15-20, 2027
Estes Park, Colorado
About This Conference
Ultra-High Temperature Ceramics are a family of compounds that display a unique set of properties, including extremely high melting temperatures (>3000°C), high hardness and good chemical stability and strength at high temperatures. UHTC materials typically include the carbides, nitrides, and borides of the refractory transition metals. The combination of properties makes these materials potential candidates for a variety of high-temperature structural applications, including engines, high-speed vehicles, plasma arc electrodes, advanced nuclear fuels, fusion first walls and divertors, cutting tools, furnace elements, and high temperature shielding.
As the majority of the proposed applications are in chemically reactive environments, the development of UHTCs as structural materials for use in oxidizing and rapid heating environments at temperatures above 1600°C is, therefore, of great engineering importance. For the past two decades researchers have built on a resurgence in exploration of UHTCs and have expanded the scope of engineering and design using these novel materials. Topics such as incorporating UHTCs in fiber reinforced composites; investigating unique high entropy carbides and borides, and expanding the field of MAX phases have all led to the growth of this field.
The purpose of this meeting is to thus bring together interested parties from academia, government and industry in a single forum that allows researchers in the field of UHTCs share cutting edge ideas, and identify opportunities to transition promising materials technologies.
Conference Outline
Interest in high temperature ceramic materials has been growing in recent years, with significant ongoing research programs in many countries across the world, mainly due to the development of new technologies and applications with demanding temperatures and environments. Often extreme temperatures are combined with aggressive chemical environments, higher energy/enthalpy flows and, in the nuclear industry, to ionizing radiation. The production and processing of next-generation materials capable of operating in these conditions is non-trivial, especially at the scale required in many of these applications.
In some cases, discovery of new compositions is required. Processing and joining strategies of these materials to themselves or other material types (e.g. metals) are still a relatively new topic. The need for long-term reliability in many components means that defects introduced during processing will need to be kept to an minimum, well understood or defect-tolerant systems developed, e.g,. via fiber reinforcement. Modelling techniques that link different length and time scales to define the materials chemistry, microstructure, and processing strategy are key to accelerating the development of these next-generation materials. Further, they will not function in isolation but as part of a system. Thus, relevant compatible systems incorporating UHTCs subjected to these extreme conditions must also be characterized and understood.
This conference seeks to bring together processing and oxidation bench scientists, designers, engineers, and users of these materials under one roof to present on and discuss emerging and state of the art UHTC processing, evaluation, and implementation techniques.
This conference is the seventh of a regular series of meetings held every two to three years. The vision for this conference is to have 5 main topic areas:
- Processing (including all processing steps, scale up issues and novel approaches);
- Environmental response (including thermodynamic considerations, oxidation behavior, etc.);
- Characterization (including thermomechanical properties, subscale testing, etc.);
- Modelling (at all levels, from atomistic to processing and property related); and
- Applications and transition strategies/pathways (including high-speed flight, propulsion, and energy related).
While the bulk of the work presented is likely to focus on processing and characterization studies, the conference organizers would like to encourage cross-fertilization with modelers and application driven activities ongoing within the testing and design communities, as well as bringing in the “bigger picture” systems-level engineers and managers to introduce them to the capabilities of the materials and share with the researchers their needs.
Conference Organization
Conference Chairs
Chris Weinberger, Colorado State University, USA
Lavina Backman, USNRL, USA
Scott McCormick, University of California Berkeley
ECI Technical Liaison
Ram Darolia