Pprime Institute

Presentation:

Pprime (or P’ or Pprime Institute) is a French joint laboratory hosted at the French CNRS research centre and located in Poitiers. The laboratory is affiliated with the University of Poitiers (UP) and the ENSMA, a school of mechanics and aeronautics engineering. Pprime has deep expertise in the field of thermomechanical material characterization (TGA, DMA, DCS, mechanical tests, cone calorimeter, coupled or not), damage observation (microscopy, tomography), multiphysics modelling and Finite Element simulations.

Role in the project:

In close interaction with Efectis, Covess, Arkema and Air Liquide, the PPRIME Institute is contributing to the Road Trhyp project by assessing the safety of thermoplastic composite tanks subjected to fire. Based on knowledge acquired during previous studies dedicated to thermoset composites, a simulation tool will be developed using a multi-scale approach : 

• At the material level: Characterisation of degradation kinetics
• At the scale of samples representative of storage tanks: Determination of changes in thermophysical properties during degradation under the effect of different heat fluxes; it is also at this scale that the link between the incident heat flux and the reduction in the material’s mechanical properties (stiffness, strength) will be determined.
• At the structure scale (the hydrogen tank): The experimental data obtained in the previous stages will be fed into thermomechanical behaviour models which, combined with failure criteria, will make it possible to assess the conditions and times to burst or leak of pressurised tanks under fire conditions.

In order to achieve these objectives, the PPRIME Institute is committing human resources (professors, research engineers and a post-doc assigned exclusively to the project), experimental facilities (TGA, DSC, cone calorimeter, radiant panel, tensile tests, observations by microscopy or tomography, etc.) and simulation resources (identification by inverse analysis, development of behaviour models, finite element softwares).