Digital twin technology developer Akselos and engineering consultancy BEPA have entered into a partnership to work together on the application of Akselos’s Reduced Basis Finite Element Analysis (RB-FEA) technology in the offshore wind sector.
According to Akselos, its technology speeds up FEA simulations by 1,000 times at system level scale. The company said it had already put the technology in use, having been awarded an ARPA-E grant to develop a structural digital twin for the WindFloat Atlantic floating wind project.
“RB-FEA is a proven technology, reducing CAPEX by 30% in complex offshore structures, as well as protecting billions of dollars of assets with our structural digital twins. If we can do the same in wind, we can play a key role in accelerating the energy transition and meeting ambitious renewables targets across the world”, said Dylan Mitchell , Akselos’s Sales Director for Wind.
Akselos has also joined forces with the Renewables Consulting Group (RCG), whose innovation and offshore wind development experts have been working together to define the market potential for RB-FEA. Going forward, Akselos and RCG will continue to collaborate to help maximise the impact of RB-FEA on the offshore wind sector, the digital twin technology developer said.
Last year, Akselos and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) won a CHF 1.2 million (approx. EUR 1 million) grant from the Swiss Innovation Agency (Innosuisse) to deliver a next-generation structural design and assessment tool for wind turbines.
In 2018, Akselos was awarded USD 10 million (approx. EUR 8 million) by Innogy Ventures and Shell Ventures for the development of its predictive digital twin technology.