The present ANR project aims at fabricating and exploring the properties of a special class of capsules called “ethosomes”, resulting from the self-assembly of phospholipids in the presence of water and ethanol. The main objective of the project is to develop the underpinning science required to address challenges in designing ethosomes based on phospholipids rich in n-3 Poly-Unsaturated Fatty Acids (PUFA). Ethosomes can be used in nutrition applications because of the substantial benefits of PUFA in human health. Moreover, due to the presence of ethanol, ethosomes present membrane fluidity properties that make them interesting delivery systems by the topical route. So far, the phospholipids used to fabricate conventional liposomes or ethosomes are extracted from soya or egg yolk sources. The food industry is generating large amounts of by-products, most of them remaining under valorised. In this project, we propose to produce phospholipids either from animal marine or vegetable sources using supercritical CO2 as a “green” extraction solvent. Ethanol will be mixed with CO2 in order to improve the extraction yield. Delivering phospholipids rich in n-3 PUFA is really challenging due to their susceptibility to chemical degradation. Indeed, polyunsaturated lipids are sensitive to heat, light and oxygen exposure. This causes product deterioration in terms of aroma, texture, shelf life and colour. Within this project, we will examine the impact of ethanol on the physical and chemical stability of liposomes containing a large fraction of n-3 PUFA chains under well-defined storage conditions. In addition to the high-resolution techniques already available, we will develop a novel technique to follow lipid oxidation based on micro-calorimetry. Indeed, non-destructive, simple and efficient technique to follow the complex oxidation process is highly sought-after and not presently available.

The French territory presents many old historical constructions classified as building open to the public (ERP). However, this architectural heritage in masonry is fragile regarding the fire risk as the disaster that occurred on April 15 at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. After a fire, the heritage value of these ERP implies that, if a doubt of structural stability exists, the question of their demolition is generally ruled out, unlike contemporary constructions without architectural value. Moreover, when these buildings are classified as Historic Monuments (HM), they must be restored and, or at least be rebuilt as it was. In any case, the question of the structure stability subjected to fire remains. However, today, knowledge and tools to assess the post-fire structural stability of a masonry building are still missing. The DEMMEFI project proposes to respond to this problem by carrying out a post-fire structural assessment methodology for complex 3D masonry structures. This methodology will first be applied to a common span of the nave of Notre-Dame cathedral and then generalized to similar masonry historic buildings with high heritage value. The methodology developed will be based on the combined and optimized use of the two main existing numerical methods: the finite element method (FEM) and the discrete element method (DEM). A so-called hybrid FEM-DEM method will be proposed in order to combine the advantages of the FEM and DEM methods in order to simulate the mechanical behavior of masonry material. The problem of mechanical stability subjected to fire action (during fire and post-fire) will be provided by a thermo-mechanical characterization of equivalent materials (limestone and lime mortar) and assemblies. Moreover, an estimation of the spatio-temporal fire action on the vault extrados will be studied. The modeling strategy will be based on a multi-scale approach using the hybrid method from the material to the structure. Finally, the relevance of stability indicators in terms of limit thrusts, limit displacements or limit stresses will be studied for each type of sub-structure of the cathedral in order to propose practical verification methods contributing to the structural assessment of these complex heterogeneous structures.

Cereal grains are the most important renewable resource for human food and animal feed. About 55% of the 35 MT French wheat production is exported each year making France a major actor on the international market. However, French wheat has to face the production of other wheat growing countries whose agronomical practices favour low production prices and/or high protein content of grains, one of the main quality criteria of wheat. EVAGRAIN focuses on the technological facet of the wheat quality defined as the ability to meet expectations for a given end-use. Measuring the technological quality is crucial for determining the market price, but besides the protein content, very few other criteria are actually used. Yet, wheat quality is complex, especially as agricultural trends change: i) climate change imposes increasing abiotic constraints on crops and ii) new sustainable agricultural practices arise from the market and societal demands. As a result the harvest quality and quantity get more heterogeneous which has significant adverse consequences on the agri-food chain, from storage to bakery product quality. Clearly a more robust and versatile evaluation system of grain quality is needed to answer the quality demand for a large range of uses, to anticipate more severe quality variations consecutive to global warming and to compete on the international market. The ambition of EVAGRAIN is to design a Decision Support System (DSS) which can integrate knowledge about wheat quality and deliver plausible interpretations of quality tests results: i) for various end-uses in industry and ii) based on analytical data. A second objective is to explore innovative analytical quality tests. Finally, a third objective is to support knowledge transfer from cereal science and technology to economic actors of the cereal sector. To reach these objectives the DSS will involve model-based assessment systems allowing comprehensive accounts of the dependences between the behavioural properties (protein aggregation capacity, dough visco-elasticity…) and the quality criteria (dough stickiness, bread loaf volume, biscuit colour…). The final DSS will integrate knowledge and data about grain and cereal products from different sources as database, literature, existing models, experts…Especially, research in cereal science has shown that beyond the content and nature of the proteins other grain components, such as lipids and pentosans, but also water status can deeply influence the technological behaviour of grains and the cereal product quality. The project will investigate these compounds allowing to establish possible relationships with protein behaviours and grain quality. This new knowledge will be integrated to the DSS to improve its performances. The final system will be implemented as a web-tool, usable by any actor of the cereal sector eager to assess the quality of wheat grain with three major outputs: -The prediction of the quality of wheat with respect to end-use. - An explicit account of the reasoning underlying the prediction of quality - An assessment of the uncertainty of the outcomes. EVAGRAIN is an interdisciplinary project that combines modelling approaches, experimental research and technological developments. A strong expertise on wheat quality is gathered from the institutional and industrial partners of the project, which will be reinforced by a scientific and technical advisory committee selected from VegepolysValley stakeholders. The food industry is facing a growing need for process optimization based on detailed resource characterization. This project will pave the way for the development of new standards to qualify wheat grain by promoting new assessment practices. EVAGRAIN's operational development will be limited to bread-making and biscuits, for which there are more data from the literature and the expertise of EVAGRAIN's partners.

Pc2TES aims at developing a new kind of materials with high potential for cost-effective compact thermal energy storage (TES) at high temperature. The proposal is based on a ground-breaking idea which consists in using chemical compounds formed during peritectic transitions. The term peritectic refers to reactions in which a liquid phase (L) reacts with at least one solid phase (a) to form a new solid phase (ß). The reaction is reversible and takes place at constant temperature. The formed phase (a) is either a solid solution of one of the components, an allotropic phase of one of the components, or a new stoichiometric compound. In such materials, the thermal energy will be stored by two consecutive processes: a melting/solidification process and a liquid-solid chemical reaction. On cooling (discharge process), the pro-peritectic phase ß(s) starts to nucleate once the liquid phase reaches the liquidus temperature, and then it grows until the peritectic temperature is reached. At this point, the liquid phase reacts with ß(s) to form a(s). On heating (charging process), the solid a(s) decomposes at the peritectic temperature into a liquid phase and the solid ß (s). Then, the solid ß(s) melts. As far as we know, this idea has never been proposed before and no team in the world is exploring it. It follows the recent preliminary research conducted by partner 1 (I2M) and might lead to a TES technology with higher performances and lower cost than those currently used or investigated. The proposal will focused on the 300-600°C temperature range, which allows covering a wide spectrum of significant and challenging applications. Compared to the state-of-the-art in TES at high temperature, the main expected advantages of using peritectic compounds are as follows: Compact TES. The effective energy density provided by the liquid-solid reaction leading to the peritectic compound lies within the interval 200-400 kWh/m3 in many cases, whereas it can be as high as 400-650 kWh/m3 when the energy associated to the melting/solidification of the pro-peritectic solid is added. These values are comparable (even higher) to those of gas-solid reactions under investigation in the world and make peritectics attractive for large-scale TES applications. Simple TES technology. Contrary to gas-solid reactions in which chemical reactants have to be separated, the liquid phase and the solid phases involved in peritectic formation separate and recombine by themselves. Moreover, the storage material works at atmospheric pressure both in charge and in discharge. As a result, simple storage concepts, like one-single tank with storage material in bulk and embedded heat exchanger, will apply. Cost-effective TES solutions. The investment cost (as well as those of operation and maintenance) will be therefore much lower than that of the technologies based on solid/gas reactions. Moreover, as the expected volumetric energy density is much higher than that of currently used phase-change materials, the investment cost should be lower than that of latent heat storage technologies and probably close to that of the cheapest sensible heat storage systems. To summarize, the perictectic compounds could lead to TES solutions gathering the advantages of the technologies currently used or investigated while avoiding their respective drawbacks.

The control of wave propagation, which relies on the artificial media design, is an important topic in fundamental and applied research as well. Unusual acoustic properties have been observed in both phononic crystals, periodic structures allowing the control of the wave at the scale of the wavelength, and metamaterials in which the effect is expected at large wavelength compared to structuration size. Numerous functionalities have been demonstrated such as frequency filtering and demultiplexing, acoustic insulation, wave guiding, acoustic cloaking, negative refraction and super-resolution, pulse delaying and compression with different application fields such as telecommunication components, imaging and acoustic stealth. However, few phononic crystals and metamaterials have ended up as actual devices because of their lack of tunability: the control of wave propagation, often obtained for a limited frequency range, is completely defined by the geometry and physical properties of the constitutive materials at the fabrication stage. To bring to these devices tunability and re-configurability, which are nowadays essential to satisfy most professional system requirements, MIRAGES project aims at developing tunable and reconfigurable active phononic crystals and metamaterials which will include piezoelectric or magnetostrictive materials and will be controlled by electric or magnetic fields. Tuning of active materials elasticity will be insured by external electrical impedance variations for piezoelectric constituents or by DC magnetic bias for magnetostrictive materials. The establishment of generic models and technologies for the design, elaboration and optimization of active phononic crystals and metamaterials constitutes the first goal of the project. Theoretical and numerical models, elaboration processes and specific characterization set-ups will be developed to evaluate quantitatively the magnitude of properties variations provided by the different materials, structures and control methods and to identify the optimal solution in terms of tunability range, frequency and fabrication technology. In connection with this general concept, two goals related to specific applications are forecast in MIRAGES project: • the demonstration that the integration of a controllable active material within a phononic crystal bring a clear added value to an existing acoustic MEMS component used in telecommunications. Electric or magnetic control of one-dimensional magnetostrictive phononic crystal will be studied in the MHz range to realize either a switchable Bragg mirror, a post-fabrication finely tunable (less than 1%) Coupled Resonator Filter or a Fabry-Perot acoustic resonator with broad tuning (more than 10%). • the first realization of an electrically controlled gradient-index metamaterial or phononic crystal for stealth applications. To mimic sonar, the demonstrator will take the form of an active wall located between an acoustic source and a target. Constituted by a two-dimensional phononic crystal or metamaterial with piezoelectric inclusions, the wall will act as a countermeasure on the position, the speed and the orientation of a target. This demonstrator will fully exploit the possibilities given by the static, dynamic and real-time electric control of the artificial medium to shape the delay, the frequency content and the reflection angle of the reflected beam.