The most important event in the ocean energy calendar
“Technocampus” is a group of technological research platforms dedicated to advanced manufacturing. The facilities bring together industrial & academic players from strategic sectors and high-performance equipment in one shared campus. The focus is on advanced manufacturing technologies in four key sectors: aeronautics, automobile, naval and marine renewable energy. There are currently 3 platforms: Technocampus Composites, Technocampus Ocean and Technocampus Smart Factory.
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Technocampus Ocean is a shared technological research platform dedicated to marine structures and metallic materials. Its 18,000m2 houses industrial & academic players working on developing innovative manufacturing technologies for shipbuilding and marine renewable energy.
The high power « marine energy system » platform fosters innovation in the naval and ocean energy industries and addresses corrosion and thermal cycling issues. State-of-the-art equipment is made available to CEA’s partners to evaluate the behaviour of marine energy systems and batteries in realistic conditions, in order to optimise integration processes. An array of testing methods replicating physico-chemical constraints in an open sea environment complete this industrial system’s « marinisation » offer : a salt-fog generator, a climate chamber, an engine bench and an electricity grid simulator.
The « Non-Destructive Inspection » platform combines robotics and x-ray instrumentation. It can perform detailed inspections of large-scale composite or metallic parts (plane or wind turbine parts for example), with multi-resolution imaging adapted to the subject. By detecting fissures, porous areas, density irregularities and delamination, the platform can reduce acquisition time and extend the lifespan of ocean energy equipment.
The Charman Cobot: Jules Verne IRT and its partners (Bureau Veritas, DCNS, Servisoud, STX France and Centrale Nantes (IRCCyN)) have developed an autonomous welding cobot prototype for assembling prefab blocks. The cobot automatically adjusts its trajectory along vertical walls to distribute welding seams appropriately depending on the characteristics of the weld joint.
This project was completed in January 2016 with positive results for manufacturers who agreed to launch a second collaborative research project involving IRT Jules Verne, Servisoud and STX France which aims to industrialising the product.
Jules Verne IRT’s equipment includes an industrial metal 3D printer (SLM 280 HL model). Through laser powder fusion, this 3D printer enables the production of complex metal prototypes, parts and structures. This printing process enables significant improvements to the conception of parts and structures, leading to enhanced performance and making optimal use of raw materials.
The cable parallel robot is dedicated to the manipulation and sorting of large-scale sheet metal using a Man/Machine Interface with augmented reality.
The cable parallel robots are a positioned as a complimentary technology to other robotics solutions, such as 4, 5 or 6 axis arms. They are affordable, compact and possess interesting characteristics: bearing heavy loads, moving them over great distances quickly and controlling their orientation and position without lateral movement. The most well-known cable robots are those used for filming in stadiums.
Developed for STX for the naval sector, this robot is able to work with large-scale parts and thus could be used for manufacturing blades, for example.
Jules Verne Technical Research Institute
The WEAMEC (for West Atlantic Marine Energy Center) federates the Marine Renewable Energy ecosystem of “Pays de la Loire” French Region in the fields of Research,Training and Innovation activities, with four priority axes:
Develop bottom-fixed offshore wind, especially in extreme conditions (hard ground, strong swell, etc.) of the Atlantic coast area.
Accelerate the transition from fixed to floating offshore wind.
Move ahead with less mature MRE technologies, such as tidal energy, ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) and wave energy.
Develop innovative technological building blocks for these different technologies.
The WEAMEC brings together around thirty institutions and research laboratories (such as Centrale Nantes, Nantes University, “Jules Verne Research Institute”, EMC2 cluster…) and around fifty companies at a regional level. More than 100 companies at the French and international level collaborate with the academic and industrial stakeholders of WEAMEC.
The skills of these stakeholders, coupled with structuring testing facilities, has led to over 200 regional, national and European projects for a portfolio of more than 50 M€ for the regional stakeholders. More than 300 engineers and researchers are involved in research, amongst the academic partners only, which corresponds to 150 full time equivalent posts.
Technocampus Composites is a shared technological research platform dedicated to composite manufacturing. It houses industrial & academic players that work on developing innovative manufacturing technologies for high-performance composite materials.
In order to accelerate the deployment of innovation composites technologies in factories, the IRT Jules Verne has installed a set of equipment dedicated to thermoplastic composite processes. The facility provides support to R&D projects in need of important experimental resources (large-scale but also flexible and adaptable) to improve the competitivity of thermoplastic processes along the entire supply chain from raw material to finished product. The platform, comprised of several machines, foreshadows what could be the composite factory of the future.
Given that harvesting energy from the tides represents a huge potential and the geographical situation of both France and the United Kingdom is extremely favourable to the development of ocean energy, the market should benefit from a strong development in the coming years. In order to manufacture thousands of 8-metre composite tidal turbine blades, a consortium of regional SMEs was formed to develop an automated manufacturing process.
The research work aims to develop reliable calculation methods as well as equipment and processes specifically designed for high-rate production. This is complemented by automation of finishing operations and the conception of a protective coating. The mass production of blades at a low cost should be able to answer the needs of a booming ocean energy market.