In order to demonstrate that digital material engineering methodology is able to address the design and optimisation of architectured ceramic materials, solar volumetric receivers employed in Solar Thermal Power Plants (STPP) have been studied. A digital design approach for obtaining new receivers, at the macroscopic structural scale, is proposed. This approach couples virtual structure generation, ray tracing and thermal simulations at the scale of the base structural components (microscopic scale). Then, a recently developed process for manufacturing silicon carbide (SiC) parts by binder jetting is used to elaborate three optimised structures which are tested on-sun at high temperature in a solar concentrator reproducing the STPP operation conditions. The results obtained with these structures, having original shapes, are promising: the average experimental outlet air temperature reaches a maximum of 1133 K, energy yields can reach 0.49 despite high experimental heat losses, and all the SiC structures, made with a new material based on 3D printing, withstood the high temperatures reached, up to 1500 K. Comparison between digital and experimental results shows that the approach presented in this paper paves the way to a new digital material engineering approach.

为了证明数字材料工程方法能够解决建筑陶瓷材料的设计和优化，研究了太阳能热电厂 (STPP) 中采用的太阳能体积接收器。提出了一种在宏观结构尺度上获得新接收器的数字设计方法。这种方法在基础结构组件的尺度（微观尺度）上结合了虚拟结构生成、光线追踪和热模拟。然后，使用最近开发的通过粘合剂喷射制造碳化硅 (SiC) 部件的工艺来精心制作三种优化结构，这些结构在太阳能聚光器中在高温下进行测试，重现 STPP 操作条件。使用这些具有原始形状的结构获得的结果很有希望：