In 2018, transportation accounted for 29% of the GreenHouse Gas (GHG) emissions in the European Union (EU), 71% of which coming from ground transportation. To mitigate the environmental impact of transportation, the EU has targeted a 90% reduction in GHG emissions by 2050 (compared to 1990 levels). Regarding ground transportation, the use of zero emission Fuel Cell Electrical Vehicles (FCEVs) powered by renewable hydrogen is a promising path. Nevertheless, Fuel Cell Systems (FCS) still need to be improved in order to maximize reliability, durability, efficiency and to reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). The FCS-ROTOR project, bringing together ENOGIA, the SHARPAC team of FEMTO-ST and the Turbomachinery team of LMFA, is fully dedicated to providing innovative technical solutions in order to solve this multi-disciplinary, multi-operating point and multi-objective optimization problem, with a major focus on design and control of the air management subsystem and more specifically of its compressor, taking into account standard driving cycles such as New European Driving Cycle (NEDC) or Worldwide harmonized Light vehicles Test Cycles (WLTC). The FCS-ROTOR project proposes a unique methodology based on FCS modeling, multi-fidelity turbomachinery modeling and experimental validations involving and combining disciplines such as electrical engineering, energy control and management, aerodynamics, fluid-structure interactions, design and manufacturing, metamodeling and global optimization. The inherent transdisciplinarity of the project will lead to strong interaction and cooperation between the partners. FCS-ROTOR will allow significant progress in the field of FCEVs and will strongly contribute to an efficient and economically attractive energy transition, aiming for 100% carbon-free mobility from well to wheels.

Digital Inline Holography (DIH) is a fast-developing 3D coherent imaging technique. With a single, compact and low-cost optical set-up, it has the potential to provide, with an unsurpassed large depth of field and multi-scale capabilities, detailed information on complex shape and low contrast micro- to milli- meter objects encountered in many scientific, industrial and health areas. ATICS (Advanced Three-dimensional Imaging of Complex particulate Systems) is a four-year research and collaborative project carried out by four university, CNRS, engineer schools and CEA laboratories. Its main objective is to develop a set of advanced and robust light scattering and reconstruction tools and methods, than can increase tenfold the practical capabilities of DIH. All for the purpose of in-situ characterization of the 3D dynamics, shape, size and composition of particulate and biological media encountered in, today’s research of primary societal importance, and most notably for recycling, materials processing, biological imaging and ultrasound therapies. Based on the partners complementary expertise, all scientific aspects of the problem are fully addressed in this project. First, it is necessary to improve the modelling of the hologram formation, propagation, and recording (electromagnetic simulations and asymptotic light scattering models). A next step is to better account for issues raised by hologram magnification (with camera lenses, microscopes objectives, as well as converging and diverging illumination beams) and optical aberrations introduced by optics and interfaces. Another issue is to account for more realistic object shapes and properties (distorted droplets, particle aggregates, details of bacterial morphology…). The development of advanced reconstruction methods, based on back propagation and inverse problems approaches, is certainly a major contribution of the ATICS project. These new methods are to be implemented into fast parallel computing and machine learning algorithms to solve the time-consuming issue and provide efficient tools for applications. The applicability of these tools is demonstrated via four experiments in different up to date research areas: (i) cold sprays, with surface deposition issues on thermosensitive support; (ii) bubbly flow interacting with an acoustic field, for innovative ultrasound therapies; (iii) reactive droplets in milli- and micro-fluidic flows and in levitation, with liquid-liquid transfer and recycling issues; (iv) living micro-organisms, with detection issues in various biological fluid samples. These four applications are also designed to bring physical insight and validation data for the modelling aspects as well as to increase the impact and benefits of the project for the scientific and industrial communities involved. Dissemination of knowledge and transfer is also an important part of the ATICS project, with notably the training of 9 Master of Sciences and 2 PhD students, and 1 postdoctoral researcher. Special attention is also paid to the publication and communication of scientific results in high-level journals, national and international conferences, as well as the organization of a thematic day, a conference, the sharing of digital tools on a GitHub repository and, as part of the open science movement, publications in media with a large audience (Wikipedia articles).

Flows controlled by moving contact lines are ubiquitous in nature and industry, with in particular many potential innovative applications in aeronautics (clean paint, windshields, icing, …). The objective of this project is to focus on wetting statics and dynamics in presence of vibrations or icing, in order to develop new substrates for aeronautics. For this purpose our multidisciplinary team combining chemists, experimentalists, theoreticists and numericists will work is close connection with the industrial partnair Airbus and will both adress fundamental aspects and innovative applications. The main scientific and technological challenges considered in this project can be listed as follows: i) Identification by the industrial partner airbus of new emerging technologies from other industries (glasses, substrates, coating process…) of potential interest for aeronautical applications, in order to be considered in the project. ii) Investigation of new anti-icing and deicing coatings by considering single biomimetic anti-ice coatings, super-hydrophobic and self-lubricating coatings, and grafting of anti-freeze proteins. ii) Study, analysis and modelling of wetting dynamics for manipulated surfaces at small scale, combined with new experiments on drop solidification with model fluids in the lab (typically paraffin and gels of versatile properties), (iii) Investigation of wetting and icing on new substrates (both elaborated during the project and resulting from emerging technologies) in a specific device able to reproduce frozen conditions in well controlled realistic conditions for both the ambient air, the drop and the substrate. (iv) Control of wetting with or without solidification by acoustic waves or vibrating surfaces in order to study in detail the physical mechanisms involved and their potential application to aeronautical situations considered in this project. (v) The related challenges posed by the modelling in close connexion with experiments of the effects of contact line at large scales taking into account substrate properties (texture, temperature, inclination, ..), ambient conditions (pressure, temperature, humidity), and the inertia and/or solidification at the contact line. We propose an integrated experimental/theoretical/computational project to attack these problems in strong collaboration with Airbus. Briefly, an new experimental set-up with temperature, pressure and humidity control will be designed and used at IMFT for icing study on selected substrates. Those substrates will be selected by Airbus or designed by ITODYS. In parallel, well controlled experiments for moving contact line under solidification of subjected to acoustic waves will be conducted at MSC. Those experiments will be used for the validation of theoretical model developed at LMFA and integrated in numerical modeling (LFMA-IMFT).

Nowadays, the design and synthesis of catalysts is a major challenge to address societal, environmental issues within the ecological transition. Hence, it is necessary to gain an understanding of the fundamental properties of catalysts at the atomic and electronic levels. Identification of the active catalyst phases under operando conditions is a significant drawback in heterogeneous catalysis. Until now, surface analysis of catalysts by XPS lab techniques is restricted to post-mortem/ante-mortem characterization of catalysts. Our consortium proposes developing a 2D membrane-cell for Lab-setup XPS systems inspired by environmental electron microscopy (high pressure-cells) and able to operate around ? 5 mbar of pressure, particularly suitable for optimized catalytic applications. The cell will contain a maximum volume of 0.5L with a transit time ? 30 sec, preventing thus mass transfer limitations (MTL). This consortium gathers physicists specialized in the elaboration and characterization of thin films/surface chemists, IMN and IRCELYON, as well as fluid mechanics, LMFA, designers, and engineers of vacuum devices, CRYOSCAN. The partners have complementary skills and means on a unique techno/scientific development such as a cell isolated from the vacuum by a graphene membrane containing: its sample holder, a photoelectron acceleration system and a powerful gas injection device. This new prototype membrane cell combined with laboratory photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) will thus allow the development (IMN) and characterization of several types of catalysts under relevant catalytic reaction conditions without consequent modifications of the existing UHV-XPS system (IRCELYON).

The main aim of this proposal is to implement a synergistic approach leveraging innovative High-Performance Computing techniques and observations to advance fundamental knowledge on the dynamics underlying the emergence of large scale extreme events and local instabilities in stratified and rotating turbulent fluids and their feedback on mixing and transport properties of such flows. This project has the ambition to achieve an unprecedented statistical and phenomenological characterization of large scale extreme events and their feedback on the small scales in a novel paradigm in fluid turbulence: that of three dimensional rotating and stratified flows where the energy goes to both large and small scales with a dual constant flux cascade. The fundamental study proposed is therefore a synthesis of major research themes of the Axe 7.1 The capability to design state of the art high-resolution DNS of rotating and stratified turbulence able to capture all these phenomena in a parameter space compatible with the real flows, together with the expertise and means present within the scientific team of the EVENTFUL project to design experiments and field campaigns in the stratosphere and Mesosphere-Lower Thermosphere (MLT), will lead to a comprehensive assessment of the emergence and dynamics of large-scale powerful events in the active flow fields, by means of an – innovative and synergistic – combined use of observations, DNS and machine learning techniques, as detailed in the following. Objectives will be accomplished taking advantage of the extensive experience gained by the scientific team in implementing the proposed methodologies and in the investigation of anisotropic turbulent flows.