Workshop
New Materials for Extreme  Environments

Nuremberg, 2007-05-14 – A series of lectures and dis-cussions on the subject of “Space Materials for High Temperature Applications” will be taking place from 26. to 27. June 2007, at the “Politecnico di Torino” in Turin, Italy. The Extremat Consortium, together with the Bayern Innovativ GmbH, Department BayTech, would like to invite interested scientists to this event, as well as manufacturers and users of extreme materials. 

On February 1, 2003 the NASA Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere. The cause of the accident was a piece of foam that broke off during launch and damaged the thermal protection system components. During re-entry the damaged wing slowly overheated and came apart, eventually leading to loss of control and total disintegration of the vehicle.

For this purpose, the development of new and more solid materials is one of the most important fields of the present space research. The state of the art will be presented during the workshop by material producers, researchers and end users, with particular reference to thermal protection sys-tems of reentry vehicles. The utilization of specific techniques will be discussed, together with facilities for testing materials under conditions simulating the extreme environ-ment of space. 

The workshop aims to provide an overview of space materi-als for high temperature applications and it will offer the op-portunity of debating the most recent advancements in space materials and the prospects for the future. The lecturers are renowned researchers from the field of material research in air and space travel, e.g. Dr. Mrityunyay Sing from Ohio Aerospace Institute (NASA, USA), Dr. Alida Bellosi from National Research Council (Italy) and Ralf Knoche from Astrium GmbH (Germany). In all, 9 leading scientists from Europe and the USA will be reporting on current research findings and their spheres of application.

This workshop is being organized in conjunction with the Extremat Consortium as a training activity within the framework of the Integrated European Project “ExtreMat”, with financial support from the European Community.  The scientific guidance is occupied by the department of materials science and chemical engineering of the Politecnico di Torino.

ExtreMat - New Materials for Extreme Environments

The ExtreMat Integrated Project targets the creation of new multifunctional materials which are beyond the scope of conventional incremental materials. The objective is to provide and industrialize new knowledge-based materials and compounds for new top-end applications in extreme environments. 37 re-nowned institutions throughout Europe are collaborating in the ExtreMat project.