Industries such as glass, nuclear, space and aeronautics industry continuously need to design new products and improve the existing ones in order to remain competitive in their market. This often involves the use and the development of new materials, which are mechanically stronger, thermally more resistant and easier to manufacture. A common specificity of these industries is to work with high temperature materials up to 3000 °C. Although some facilities for measuring thermophysical properties at such high temperatures are already available, they need to be traceable to SI units in order to assess the reliability of measurements for these demanding industries.
In order to fill this gap, EMPIR Hi-TRACE project aimed at developing reference facilities and new methodologies for measuring thermophysical properties (thermal diffusivity, specific heat, normal emissivity, temperature of fusion and thermal contact resistances of layered systems) of solid materials at these high temperatures with low uncertainties of a few percent. The project was split into four technical work packages (WP). In WP 1 a reference apparatus based on the laser flash method was developed for reliably determining the thermal diffusivity values up to 3000 °C. A comparison between this reference setup and devices used by industrial partners was organized for different materials in order to validate the industrial measurements and associated uncertainty budgets. Drop calorimeters were designed in WP 2 for measuring the specific heat with a high accuracy. Other facilities based on ohmic or laser pulse-heating techniques were adapted for high temperature measurements and compared with the drop calorimeters. In WP 3 emissivity and temperature of fusion was investigated by different facilities, using induction-heating, ohmic-pulse-heating and laser-flash-heating. A 3D model based on measurements of bi-layers and tri-layers artefacts was developed in WP 4 for calculating the thermal contact resistance between layers, which is a key parameter for understanding the debonding phenomena of e.g. thermal barrier coating on gas turbine blades. The presentation gives an overview of the project, its unique network of facilities necessary for addressing today and future market needs as well as a short overview of the derived results.

Acknowledgement: The project Hi-TRACE (17IND11) has received funding from the EMPIR programme co-financed by the Participating States and from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.