IIHNE-Projects and partnerships

Bureau Veritas - Centrale Nantes Chair in hydrodynamics and marine structures (2016-2025)

In March 2016, Centrale Nantes and Bureau Veritas established an international research chair on ships of the future, in partnership with HydrOcean and Nextflow Software. Centrale Nantes, with its excellent reputation in the field of numerical and experimental hydrodynamics, and Bureau Veritas, a world leader in testing, inspection and certification services for shipping and offshore structures, created this international chair in Hydrodynamics and Marine Structures in order to make significant improvements in the safety and performance of ships of the future.

Joint Laboratory of Marine Technology, Naval Group, Sirehna, Centrale Nantes (2021-2023)

Established in 2016, the JLMT is a joint industry/research laboratory whose objective is to pool the academic and industrial expertise of Centrale Nantes, the University of Nantes and Naval Group in order to inject innovation into Naval Group's industrial applications in the field of military shipbuilding.

WASANO-NExT project (2022-2025):

This 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.

H2020 project FLOATECH & ANR CREATIF (2021-2024)

With the objective of increasing the technical maturity and the cost competitiveness of floating offshore wind energy, FLOATECH aims to stimulate this transition.
Launched in January 2021 for a duration of 3 years and coordinated by TU Berlin, FLOATECH is a European H2020 project bringing together five public research institutions, including Centrale Nantes and its LHEEA research lab, with relevant expertise in offshore floating wind energy and three industrial partners involved in the most recent developments of floating wind systems.

SOFTWIND (2017-2020)

Development of an experimental platform dedicated to the model testing of floating wind turbine in a wave basin through a software-in-the-loop approach

The SOFTWIND project, run by Centrale Nantes, and more specifically its LHEEA and LS2N laboratories, and the company D-ICE, allows for small-scale wave-tank testing of wind turbines by overcoming the incompatibility between hydrodynamic and aerodynamic scaling. This new set-up establishes Centrale Nantes at the forefront of research institutes capable of testing small-scale floating wind turbines with a high degree of physical realism, and of studying new control systems that disrupt existing technology. D-ICE can also use this tool to develop its innovative systems to control the hydrodynamic movement of the wind turbine in the waves by aerodynamic adjustment of the blades.

Regional project « OSIRIS » (2021-2024), with Michelin & NextFlow Software

Behavior of agricultural tires on soft ground

SARAH (2016-2019):

Increased Safety & Robust Certification for ditching of Aircrafts & Helicopters

SARAH is a Horizon 2020 collaborative project, aiming at establishing novel holistic, simulation-based approaches to the analysis of aircraft and helicopter ditching. The project is coordinated by IBK-Innovation and its consortium. Results of SARAH are expected to support the trustworthiness of aviation services.

HeLoFOW (2019-2021)

The HeloFOW project aims to develop a hydro-elastic solver for the calculation of structural loadings of floating wind turbine foundations.

To this end, the WEAMEC HeLoFOW project aims to develop a hydro-elastic solver for the calculation of structural loads on floating wind turbine foundations. This work consists in combining an "in-house" hydrodynamic solver, based on an unsteady potential theory, with a structural solver based on a finite element formulation. The next phase - experimental validation - was carried out in the Hydrodynamic and Ocean Engineering Tank at Centrale Nantes between December 2020 and January 2021. The tests were based on a segmented model of a SPAR floating foundation. The rotor forces are represented by the SOFTWIND emulation system.

HP_Flow (2020-2022)

Hydrodynamic modelling of heave plates for floating wind turbines

The LHEEA's HP-Flow project started in September 2020 as part of WEAMEC's "Research" calls in partnership with NTNU and Innosea. This project focuses on hydrodynamic modelling of heave plates for floating wind turbines. Heave plates are generally flat horizontal plates installed at the base of floating foundations and with a diameter larger than the foundation itself. These plates damp the heave and pitch motion of the whole structure and shift the natural frequencies of the system to limit its movement. The dual objective of HP_Flow is to model the hydrodynamics of heave plates for floating wind turbines and to carry out tank tests of different generic floating supports, which are representative of those used in floating wind turbines. The design work for the entire experimental device was carried out by the tank teams. It consists of a tripod installed at the centre of the Hydrodynamic and Ocean Engineering Tank on which a hexapod is installed which imposes movements on the model. A set of measuring devices (wave sensors, load platforms, accelerometer and strain gauges) was also installed.

Blue Growth Farm (2019)

Development of a multi-purpose offshore platform which will accommodate an aquaculture system, a wind turbine and wave-power systems.
Tank tests were carried out in October 2019 to prepare for the offshore testing of a 1 / 15th scale demonstrator and to validate a coupled aero-hydro-servo-elastic digital model.

Published on March 26, 2017 Updated on January 13, 2023