WASANO project

Marine and maritime sectors are of primary importance in the local industrial context of Nantes regional area. In those fields, efficient and sustainable management of activities at sea (security, energy efficiency, etc.) is naturally an objective, so as supporting the development of Marine Renewable Energies. At the local, national and international levels, those sectors are still facing several challenges, due to the complexity and severity of the ocean environment.

The most prominent one is probably to account for the extreme wave conditions in the design of the marine structures. Those environmental conditions as well as the induced responses exhibit complex physical processes. In this context, the present procedures for the evaluation of the extreme responses are known to be inaccurate. This induces the regulations of classification societies to consider large safety factors that may be inadequate in some conditions.

The WASANO project intends to address the problem of an accurate and controlled description of extreme environmental conditions for ocean engineering. To overcome the several identified scientific bottlenecks, the project intends to propose innovative methods to:

• define the extreme sea states responsible of the ultimate responses of structures at sea
• reproduce them in water tanks.

These will apply to environmental conditions in numerical simulations and physical experiments at model scale (Centrale Nantes Ocean tanks).

Due to the large extent of the scientific themes involved in the project (statistics, fundamental physics, experiments, numerical modeling, etc.), there is a need in bringing together experts in their respective fields. The WASANO project will create a large international consortium in view of establishing reference procedures, which are expected to be part of the future of regulations at international level.
This would be a significant result for the future of the ocean engineering industry in order to:

• reduce costs associated to a too large safety margin
• reduce risks associated to the extreme responses of marine structures.

This international partnership involves for now 10 world-renowned international universities as well as 3 industrial partners. The latter will ensure the adequacy between the research developed and the effective needs of the ‘Industry of Tomorrow’.

The WASANO project in a few figures :

• 3 test campaigns in ponds
• 5 theses involved in the project, including 1 dedicated to the project between 2022 and 2025
• 1 post-doc dedicated to the project
• 3 Master's courses

1st test campaign in March 2022: