Research and Innovation in 2022

Tests for the HP_Flow project took place in June 2022 in the Hydrodynamic and Ocean Engineering Tank at Centrale Nantes. Watch the footage of this test campaign on the hydrodynamics of heave plates which are designed to damp the heave motion of floating wind turbines.

The HEMI cluster aims to bring together researchers, professionals and students from different fields of engineering sciences and humanities and social sciences to improve how human factors and user experience are taken into account in industrial design, manufacturing and production processes.

Eolink, Valorem and Centrale Nantes have received €14.9m in funding from the “France 2030" funding programme. The financed project includes the manufacturing and commissioning of an innovative floating wind turbine developed by EOLINK.

Following several years of development in the LHEEA laboratory (Centrale Nantes / CNRS) a first offshore measurement campaign with a stabilised scanning LiDAR has been completed. This measuring device, the result of technological development in the laboratory, was deployed to characterise the wake of a floating wind turbine, FLOATGEN, installed on the SEM-REV test site.

The 'Printemps de la Recherche' 2022 on "Offshore wind energy: challenges and prospects in energy transition" will take place on Thursday 15 September 2022 at La Carrière - Saint-Herblain (Nantes). This national event will bring together more than 200 representatives from business, research and education, government and local authority officials, associations, etc., and explore all aspects of offshore wind energy from the perspective of innovation.

CFM (French Mechanics Congress) brings together the French and French-speaking community in the field of mechanics under the aegis of the Association Française de Mécanique (AFM). The 2022 edition will be hosted in Nantes, from 29 August to 2 September. It is organised by Centrale Nantes, the CNRS, alongside Nantes University, the University of La Rochelle and the École Navale.

The "MEA & AFLOWT Innovation Tour" gathered more than 100 participants from all over Europe on June 29 and 30 around Marine Renewable Energies at Centrale Nantes. This event was organized by Centrale Nantes, SEM-REV and WEAMEC within the framework of the MEA and AFLOWT projects, both funded by Interreg North West Europe.

Rogue waves are very high ocean waves, compared to their immediate neighbours, which can form on both calm and rough seas. This sudden and unpredictable phenomenon may be rare, but it needs to be studied because of its danger to sea users. These rogue waves are the subject of joint collaboration between researchers from Centrale Nantes - via the LHEEA - the CNRS and the universities of Paris and Lille as part of the ANR DYSTURB project.

The 3-week Innovation & Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Manufacturing (IESMA) - EIT Manufacturing Summer School - is currently underway at University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI). Two faculty members from Centrale Nantes presented a module on Design Thinking in week one.

Are you a student, researcher, doctor, nurse, physiotherapist or psychologist? LUNG O2 is holding a summer school to raise your awareness of precision medicine applied to respiratory disease.

The LiftWEC European project aims to develop a novel and commercially attractive wave energy converter whose working principle is based on the hydrodynamic lift of rotating hydrofoils around a horizontal axis. Discover the whole project and the series of tests carried out in the LHEEA Ocean Tank on the Centrale Nantes campus in 2021.

As part of Centrale Nantes' participation in Seanergy 2022, join us on June 15 at 5:30 p.m. at the Pavillon des Pays de la Loire (Stand EF1 Hall 2).

As part of its work on innovation in healthcare, the ARS des Pays de la Loire is organising a two-day workshop to discuss future healthcare on 9 and 10 June. Several faculty members from Centrale Nantes will be attending.

This conference is being held as part of the "Journées Scientifiques" of Nantes University on Friday 03 June 2022 at the Cité des Congrès in Nantes.

On 24 March 2022, a first-ever evacuation exercise by helicopter from a floating wind turbine (FLOATGEN) took place on the SEM-REV offshore test site in France. This exercise in real conditions required cooperation between CROSS Etel, the Sécurité Civile, the SNSM, BW Ideol and Centrale Nantes.

Kymatio offers a new methodological perspective on AI by combining deep learning and wavelet theory.

One of the major challenges in the maritime field today is to take extreme sea conditions into account when designing marine structures. The WASANO project, which brings together 10 international universities and 3 companies, is addressing these issues through several disciplines. Read on to learn more about the first series of tests carried out in March in the Centrale Nantes towing tank.

The cast iron shells of the IBOCS project developed by FMGC to ballast submarine electrical cables have been successfully removed from the SEM-REV test site! They were immersed on site for 3½ years, with regular monitoring throughout the experiment within the European FORESEA and OCEAN DEMO programmes. We take a look back at this experiment!

Enedis has already connected more than 536,000 renewable energy installations in the Pays de la Loire region and is committed to playing an active role in renewable energy development across France. The power grid operator has thus responded positively to the requested increase in power capacity on Centrale Nantes' offshore test site, SEM-REV.

SNCF, Centrale Nantes, VLM Robotics and 4DPioneers are today launching the Additive4Rail consortium with state support. The aim is to speed up the industrialisation of additive manufacturing technologies in order to streamline train maintenance and reduce costs by producing components piecemeal or in small batch runs. The four partners have set up a production line in Saintes to manufacture and repair metal parts, with a view to transforming railway maintenance.

Work began offshore ten years ago on installing the export cable, thereby making SEM-REV - Centrale Nantes' offshore test site - a reality. Since then the site has certainly lived up to its initial promise.

With 295 applications received, 170 projects selected and the funding of more than 600 weeks of access to the MaRINET2 consortium's test facilities, the outcomes of the MaRINET2 Transnational Access program are extremely positive. This transnational program is a major component of the MaRINET2 project (H2020-INFRAIA, 2017-2021) aimed at accelerating the development and deployment of Marine Renewable Energy (MRE) technologies.

The SEM-REV offshore test site is tasked with meeting the R&D challenges of Marine Renewable Energy technologies. To this end, measurements have been made on the offshore site since 2009. SEM-REV has just published a report summarising the meteorological and oceanic data from the site, located off the coast of Le Croisic.

Offshore wind environmental monitoring and impact studies are an important component of the research conducted at the SEM-REV offshore test site. The PIAFF&CO project will improve knowledge of flying fauna - birds and bats - in the vicinity of offshore wind farms. The project is run by Centrale Nantes in conjunction with the Centre d'Écologie et des Sciences de la Conservation du Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, the St Nazaire offshore wind farm and BW Ideol.

The webinar presenting the "RESOURCECODE Marine Data Toolbox" and the associated sea state hindcast, organized on Thursday, March 10, 2022 by Ifremer and the project partners, was a great success with the participation of more than a hundred listeners from the research community and industry.

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. This roadmap was published on 08 March 2022.

Centrale Nantes is launching a new Mooc on probability and Bayesian estimation. Registration opens on 28 February.

Researchers from the Laboratory of Digital Sciences of Nantes (LS2N) successfully established the basic technology for a wireless, battery-free acoustic biosensor. The result of their work was awarded the Best Paper Award at the Second International Workshop on the Internet of Sounds (IWIS 2021), organised in September 2021 by the Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science of the University of Trento (Italy).