Ultra-High Temperature Ceramics: Materials for Extreme Environment Applications VII

An ECI Conference Series

May 16-21, 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. 

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 a 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 workshop 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 be focused 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

Technical Liaison

Ram Darolia, GE Aviation (retired)

Previous Conferences in This Series

Ultra-High Temperature Ceramics: Materials for Extreme Environment Applications

August 3-8, 2008
Lake Tahoe, California

Conference Chairs:
Eric Wuchina, Naval Surface Warfare Center, USA
Alida Bellosi, Institute of Science & Technology for Ceramics, Italy

Ultra-High Temperature Ceramics: Materials for Extreme Environment Applications II

May 13-18, 2012
Hernstein, Austria

Conference Chairs:
Bill Fahrenholtz, Missouri University of Science & Technology, USA
Bill Lee, Imperial College, London, UK
Eric Wuchina, Naval Surface Warfare Center, USA
Yanchun Zhou, Aerospace Research Inst. Of Materials & Processing Technology, China

Ultra-High Temperature Ceramics: Materials for Extreme Environment Applications III

April 12-16, 2015
Gold Coast, Australia

Conference Chairs:
George Franks, The University of Melbourne, Australia
Carolina Tallon, The University of Melbourne, Australia

Ultra-High Temperature Ceramics: Materials for Extreme Environment Applications IV

September 17 – 20, 2017
Windsor, UK

Conference Chairs:
Jon Binner, University of Birmingham, UK
Bill Lee, Imperial College, London, UK

Ultra-High Temperature Ceramics: Materials for Extreme Environment Applications V

June 5-8, 2022 
Snowbird, Utah

Conference Chairs:
Daniel Butts, MACH-20, LLC, USA
Carmen Carney, Air Force Research Laboratory, USA
Carolina Tallon, Virginia Tech, USA
Gregory Thompson, University of Alabama, USA
Chris Weinberger, Colorado State University, USA

Ultra-High Temperature Ceramics: Materials for Extreme Environment Applications VI

April 14 – 19, 2024
Giardini Naxos, Messina, Sicily, Italy

Conference Chairs:
Diletta Sciti, CNR-ISSNC, Italy
Laura Silvestroni, CNR-ISSNC, Italy
Frédéric Monteverde, CNR-ISSNC, Italy

Conference Co-Chairs
Jon Binner, Birmingham University, UK
Raffaele Savino, University of Naples-Federico II, Italy
Gregory Thompson, University of Alabama, USA
Eric Wuchina, Naval Surface Warfare Center, USA