Research and Innovation in 2021

Luciano Vidal and Jean-Yves Hascoët have embarked upon a new project at Centrale Nantes: 3D biofabrication of an intestine from human pluripotent stem cells for transplantation.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer. Lifestyle and environment are now considered as risk factors for cancer.

Caroline Braud, research fellow at the LHEEA, talks about the ePARADISE project, which develops and tests aerodynamic sensors for wind turbines in production. These sensors were tested at full scale on a wind farm operated by VALOREM at Saint-Hilaire de Chaléons (Pays-de-loire).

IRSTV is organising a plenary to celebrate 15 years of research on the city.

The European Commission granted the HR Excellence in Research Award to Centrale Nantes on 18 November 2021

On 25 & 26 November, two events related to wind, ocean and hydropower will be held in Paris (venue to be announced) under the aegis of ANCRE and the GdR* EOL-EMR: A GdR EOL-EMR scientific day and the ANCRE Doctoral Conference co-organised with the GdR EOL-EMR.

Applications were open from 21 May 2021 to 31 July 2021. The selection committee met on 15 November 2021 and selected 8 projects.

This first, publicly available, environmental impact statement presents the work carried out, the observations and the results obtained on the SEM-REV offshore site, which is run by Centrale Nantes and the CNRS, on the Floatgen floating wind turbine. This 2 MW demonstrator, whose floating platform was developed by BW IDEOL, is deployed offshore and has been producing electricity since 2018.

The GeM (Research Institute in Civil and Mechanical Engineering) is organising the 7th Photomechanics IDICS Conference, which will be held from 3 to 5 November 2021 at the Cité des Congrès de Nantes.

On the eve of the Photomechanics-IDICS conference, a workshop on "Uncertainties in DIC measurements" will be held at Centrale Nantes on 2 November, from 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., in a hybrid format (face-to-face or online).

The 3rd edition of Infrastar's (Innovation and Networking for Fatigue and Reliability Analysis of Structures - Training for Assessment of Risk) training week will take place from 26 to 29 October 2021 at Centrale Nantes.

Join the MOOC - open to all - to discover what a supercomputer is, how to use it, what benefits it offers and how to introduce parallelism in your calculation codes.

A nacelle-mounted LiDAR, which allows upstream wind measurements, was installed in October 2020 on the floating offshore wind turbine, Floatgen, being tested on the Centrale Nantes offshore test site, SEM-REV.

Last July, the Hydrodynamic and Ocean Engineering Tank at Centrale Nantes, managed by the LHEEA, hosted testing on floating solar panels for the first time. This technology is being developed by the company HelioRec.

The French Ministry for Higher Education, Research and Innovation (MESRI) announced on 21 October 2021 the inclusion of THeoREM on the 2021 National Roadmap for Research Infrastructures.

The first scientific day of the ORACLE Cluster (Offshore wind Research ACcelerator ClustEr) - selected in the NExT call for projects "Integrated Research Clusters - wave 2" - took place on Thursday 7 October 2021. Learn more about the cluster and this event pictures.

Last July, Centrale Nantes acquired a selective laser melting (SLM) additive manufacturing machine. This new equipment can be used to manufacture parts for various sectors: aeronautics, aerospace, naval industry, automobile, railway, etc., but also for the medical field.

Last June, as part of the SafeWAVE project, an offshore operation was conducted at SEM-REV with the project partner RTSYS, with the objective of collecting data near the WAVEGEM wave platform.

DNV, the independent energy expert and assurance provider, will lead the process safety study to identify the main environmental, safety and operational risks for the world's first offshore hydrogen production facilities.

Via sensors placed out at sea and on the coastline, the website www.windmorbihan.com provides real-time wind measurements, freely accessible to all sea lovers. Initiated in 2014 by the Compagnie des Ports du Morbihan and the Ecole Nationale de Voile et des Sports Nautiques (ENVSN), windmorbihan.com remains attractive and pursues its development.

As part of the CPER Nemo project, two major upgrades are underway for the LHEEA's hydrodynamics and ocean engineering experimental facilities, located on the Centrale Nantes campus.

Centrale Nantes and Forssea Robotics are happy to announce their collaboration in the Offshore Wind Market survey field.

On Friday 2 July, France 24 broadcast a feature on offshore wind energy in France. Meet Bertrand Alessandrini, a marine engineering researcher at Centrale Nantes, in the LHEEA Laboratory.

To mark the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci's death in 2019, a team of Franco-Italian researchers specialising in fluid mechanics set out to retrace one of Leonardo's most famous drawings in the field of hydraulics. Read on to learn more about this original research project!

A digital solution to design the anchoring and electrical connections of floating wind farms, optimising the performance and output of subsea connections, has been developed by a group of expert companies within offshore renewables.

The International Towing Tank Conference (ITTC) is a voluntary association of worldwide organizations that have the responsibility for the prediction of the hydrodynamic performance of ships and marine installations based on the results of physical and numerical experiments. The 29th edition of its plenary conference was organized by the LHEEA (Centrale Nantes/CNRS) and the DGA in virtual June 2021.

France Additive is organising the 25th edition of the European Convention for Additive Manufacturing (AEFA 2021) from 8 to 10 June 2021.

The EU-funded Ocean DEMO project 4th call opens on 4 June 2021. Successful applicants will receive free access to test their ocean energy products and services in real sea environments at the project’s network of test centres.

The world's first offshore hydrogen production facility, developed by Lhyfe and powered by electricity from a floating wind turbine, will be operational in 2022, off the coast of Le Croisic, at SEM-REV, Centrale Nantes' offshore test site.

Centrale Nantes is an academic sponsor of the 1st Natural Hydrogen Worldwide Summit (H-NAT 2021) which is taking place online on 2-3 June.

The Franco-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CFACI) and Fraunhofer IAPT research institute are co-organizing an online conference on design for additive manufacturing and the future of products.

The summary report of the SPECIES project, which was published on 21 May 2021, documents the potential impact associated with the submarine power cables of MRE projects, a recurring issue in consultation processes. The results of this project, coordinated by France Energies Marines and under the scientific direction of Ifremer, are reassuring and do not show any major negative impacts, but do call for further study, particularly with regard to the impact of electromagnetic fields in situ. The SEM-REV team contributed to this project.

During ICOE 2021 (International Conference on Ocean Energy), Thomas Soulard, Research Engineer at SEM-REV, participated in a live session regarding the European OCEAN DEMO programme. Together with Lisa Fitzpatrick, Project Manager at EMEC and James P. Murray, MSc, Programme Manager at Orbital Marine Power, they discussed "Scaling up to Multi-Device: What does it take?".

During the 36th edition of the America's Cup, which took place in March 2021, NUMECA Int.'s FINE™/Marine software, whose ISIS-CFD fluid resolution module was fully developed at LHEEA (Centrale Nantes/CNRS), was again used by the winning team, ETNZ!

LHEEA's HeloFOW project, undertaken within the WEAMEC framework, aims to develop a hydro-elastic solver for the calculation of structural loads on floating wind turbine foundations.

Applications were open from 15 October to 15 November 2020 in the first Institut Carnot MERS call for projects. The selection committee met on 25 January 2021 and selected 8 projects.

Within the scope of its national Additive Manufacturing project, the SCNF (Rolling Stock Engineering division) called upon Centrale Nantes’s expertise to study the feasibility of producing certain components. The production of a pivot, an interconnecting part, by additive manufacturing is an achievement that opens up new avenues for the design of metallic components.

The UTBM Innovation Crunch Lab, Centrale Nantes, the LS2N and the GIS S.mart are organising a Crunch Meetup online on 3D scanning on Thursday 4 February 2021 from 2.00 to 5.00 pm.

Centrale Nantes, Ifremer and University Gustave Eiffel are bringing together their hydrodynamics and mechanical test facilities, to carry out research activities and collaborative projects with French and international companies.

Floatgen, the 2 MW floating wind turbine, installed on the Centrale Nantes offshore test site, SEM-REV (off Le Croisic), produced 14% more power in 2020 than in 2019, reaching an annual total of 6.8 GWh.

Almost 3 years of R&D work within the Joint Laboratory of Marine Technology went into the development of the metal 3D printing process by which this propeller was produced.