FIT Alliance Matériaux: pooling skills to build national influence in materials and processes

Through this alliance, the three Institutes propose to pool their skills, platforms, resources and expertise to serve the industry of today and tomorrow, in order to meet the major challenges of sovereignty, independence in the supply of raw materials, reduced environmental impact and shorter qualification and certification cycles for Materials and Processes.

The three IRTs are working on common and complementary themes in order to consolidate their competitiveness with their members at national and international level. This strategic alliance, made possible by the successful experience of several R&T projects carried out jointly by the three institutes, offers industrial partners access to a pool of talent, expertise in the materials value chain and the combined arsenal of experimental resources of the three IRTs. Sharing roadmaps, setting up joint projects and taking part in the Materials 2022 conference, as well as the JEC World 2023 and 2024 trade fairs, have led to the launch of numerous projects.

A map of the skills and technical resources of each institute has been drawn up in order to share the management of research projects and the investment and divestment of technical resources via internal committees.

The IRT Jules Verne works in an innovative ecosystem in partnership with leading industrial and academic actors. The IRT Jules Verne, which celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2022, has developed recognised technological expertise to meet major industrial challenges such as mobility, energy and the manufacture of production resources. Its expertise is expressed through innovative processes for the manufacture and functionalisation of complex parts and structures. These incorporate a high level of automation and digitalisation, guaranteeing enhanced competitiveness.

“The synergies between the skills and resources generated by bringing together the M2P, Saint Exupéry and Jules Verne IRTs will significantly enhance the value delivered to our partners, while at the same time meeting their need for simple, rapid access to this high-level source of technological proposals and achievements. In the FIT’s “Alliance Matériaux”, the IRT Jules Verne has now found the building blocks that ideally complement its innovation offering dedicated to Manufacturing Processes and Production Systems, in line with the national drive to reindustrialisation,” adds André Luciani, Director of Expertise and Research at the IRT Jules Verne.

The technological position of the IRT M2P focuses on the development, hybridisation and automation of high-speed processes for the production of high-performance composite materials, processes and products that contribute to lightweighting and decarbonization in key industrial sectors: aeronautics, automotive, rail and construction. Since 2013, the IRT M2P has developed know-how and pilot lines for complementary forming and processing technologies: preforming, molding processes, compression molding (SMC, BMC), pultrusion and braiding reinforcement, Automated Fibre Placement (AFP), Out of autoclave (OoA) thermoforming and consolidation, characterisation, numerical simulation.

In 2017, IRT M2P received a JEC Innovation Award for the C-RTM process, a technology resulting from the Fast RTM project.

The IRT Saint Exupéry research institute, based in Toulouse, Bordeaux is developing new multifunctional composite materials. Thanks to their technological platforms (impregnation lines, a laboratory-scale thermosetting line, a semi-industrial thermoplastic line, a line for ceramic oxide composites and, by the end of 2024, a hybrid thermoplastic robotics platform, combining in-situ AFP and additive manufacturing), the IRT Saint Exupéry is providing its expertise in the maturation of organic and ceramic matrix composites, by developing, characterising and creating proofs of concept and scaling up technologies.

By coordinating the IRTs in a transparent way, the Alliance Matériaux provides simplified access, through a single entry point, to the skills and platforms of these institutes.

Meet FIT Alliance Matériaux at JEC World 2024, hall 6, booth Q82.