The workshop goal is to focus on the understanding of damage mechanisms, and on how it can help the design of new polymer materials with enhanced resilience and tenacity. Thus, all the recent theories and modelling approaches, means of synthetizing high performance materials, new ways of characterizing the materials or new mechanical measurement are in the workshop topic. The agenda will be built in order to promote fruitful discussions between chemists, physical-chemists, physicists and mechanics.

It is know well accepted that modelling and simulation are fundamental for accelerating the conception of new materials. Thus, Michelin Group and l’Institut de Chimie de Clermont-Ferrand (ICCF : Université Clermont Auvergne / SIGMA Clermont / CNRS), which are already references in such kind of approaches, decided to go still further and created in 2017 a jointed laboratory, named SimatLab, dedicated to the modelling of polymer materials. The huge technical challenge of the lab is to establish the predictive capability of numerical tools in order to assist the innovation in rupture materials. To do so, SimatLab will develop new methodologies and molecular simulation protocols able to reproduce the behavior of real model materials through permanent interactions with experimentalists. Different topics will be addressed in that way, and more particularly one focusing on materials resistance to damage.

In this context, SimatLab and their partners are organizing a workshop with the aim of gathering together all the workers interested in the materials damage domain, whatever the lengthscale and the methods. This workshop, which will take place in Clermont-Ferrand from the 3rd to the 5th of September 2018, is dedicated to academic researchers and PhD students, but industrial people are also welcomed.