Following on from the Ecers conference in Turin, Italy, the ATHOR consortium moved to Cavaillon, in the South of France, to complete a refractory training course on Micromechanics (for more information see the flyer here).  It was hosted by our partners Saint-Gobain at their site – SGR Provence Cavaillon and combined; team building activities, a Mid Term Review by the EU, a tour of the laboratory at Saint-Gobain, site tours of Saint-Gobain SEPR Le-Pontet and Alteo Gardanne, poster sessions and of course some lectures on Micromechanics.

As this was the first time all 15 ESRs would come together; ESRs, academics and industrial partners were invited to take part in some team building activities over the weekend between the Ecers conference and the RTC2 Part 3.  Kayaking around the Calanque national parc and climbing through forests in Cassis helped them prepare for the week ahead.

Being one of the few occations the majority of academic and industrial partners were able to meet in person, we took this opportunity to invite our project officer, Szymon Shroda, and a scientific expert to conduct the Mid Term Review of the project.  All ESRs presented their individual research projects and acheivements to date in only 8 minutes!  Our project officer and scientific advisor were impressed with what they saw and we passed the Mid Term Review with flying colours.

Topics covered during this training event included; effective thermal properties of mineral materials, micromechanics using Discreet Element Modelling (DEM), microstructure monitoring by ultrasounds and the influence of CTE missmatch (cases studies).