IRT Saint Exupery, together with a dozen Partners, launched a project aiming at developing Oxide based Ceramic Matrix Composites (O-CMC). This new generation materials and solutions developed to produce them industrially open strategical prospectives for aerospace and defence applications.

The objective of this collaborative Project is to prepare for the automation of the fabrication of these materials and improve their characterization and the knowledge on their behavior. A wide range of processing routes are available for manufacturing O-CMCs, and IRT Saint Exupéry focuses on liquid-based processes: tow impregnation (towpreg) for subsequent AFP deposition, fabric impregnation (prepreg) for manual lay-up, and injection (derived from RTM process) of fibrous preforms. An update on the progress will be given and a special focus will be made on our unique thermomechanical characterization bench and its capabilities to test CMCs in severe environments.