Damien Meresse's HDR Defense

This process to obtain accreditation to supervise research builds on some fifteen years of research since the defense of my dissertation: It focused on the thermomechanical study of frictional contact, with applications in braking systems based on reinforced organic materials (NAO).

Since my appointment as Associate Professor in September 2012, two major areas of focus have shaped my scientific career.

During the early part of my career, I continued to focus on understanding the mechanisms of wear and heating in contact systems through other industrial applications, notably high-speed grinding and high-temperature forging.

Subsequently, I turned my attention to issues related to wear particle emissions in friction contacts during braking.

Over the past five years, I have helped develop a methodology for studying and characterizing fine particles within the laboratory, extending this work to other fields such as biomass combustion and cyclonic filtration.

All of this work has given me the opportunity to mentor, to date, eight students through their doctoral thesis defenses and to publish approximately fifteen articles in recognized international journals.

In this habilitation thesis, I now propose a research project to improve our understanding of surface degradation mechanisms at the microscopic scale of contact points.

It is based on three pillars:

• developing expertise in the local measurement of thermal phenomena,
• characterizing material transfer and detachment processes,
• and proposing new modeling approaches at this scale.

By improving the prediction of interface temperatures and various modes of damage, and by quantifying the influence of thermomechanical parameters and surface conditions, this project aims to provide solutions to

• extend the service life of friction components and tools,
• ensure production quality in forming processes
• and mitigate the environmental and health impacts of particulate emissions.

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