Digital Innovation Hubs
Centre de recherche en aéronautique ASBL, Cenaero
Hub Information
- Hub Name
- Centre de recherche en aéronautique ASBL, Cenaero
- Local Name
- Centre de recherche en aéronautique ASBL, Cenaero
- Evolutionary Stage
- Fully operational
- Geographical Scope
- Regional
Description
Cenaero is an applied research center providing to companies involved in a technology innovation process numerical simulation methods and tools to invent and design more competitive products. Internationally recognized, Cenaero is mainly active in the aerospace (in particular turbomachinery), process engineering, energy and building sectors. Cenaero operates experimental facilities in composite manufacturing and prototyping as well as the Tier-1 Walloon supercomputing infrastructure with 14,000 computing cores.
Cenaero est un centre de recherche appliquée qui fournit aux entreprises engagées dans un processus de progrès et d’innovation technologique des méthodologies et des outils de simulation numérique lui permettant de concevoir et réaliser des produits performants. Reconnu internationalement, Cenaero est principalement actif dans les domaines de l’aérospatiale (en particulier les turbomachines), des procédés industriels, de l’énergie et de la construction. Cenaero opère un laboratoire permettant le prototypage et la fabrication de structures composites ainsi que le supercalculateur wallon avec 14.000 cœurs de calcul.
Contact Data
- Coordinator
- Cenaero
- Year Established
- 2002
- Location
- Rue des Frères Wright 29, 6041, Gosselies (Belgium)
- Website
- http://www.cenaero.be/
- Social Media
- Contact information
-
Philippe Geuzaine
info@cenaero.be
+32-71-910930
Organisation
- Organizational form
- (Part of) Private organization
- Turnover
- 1.000.000-5.000.000
- Number of employees
- 50-100
Technologies
- Artificial intelligence
- Advanced, or high performance computing
- Big data, data analytics, data handling
- Simulation, modelling and digital twins
- Software as a service and service architectures
- Cloud computing
- Additive manufacturing
- Laser based manufacturing
Link to national or regional initiatives for digitising industry
The activities of the hub are well aligned with the Belgian national initiative for digitising industry, MADE DIFFERENT – Factories of the future.
Market and Services
Sectors
- Energy and utilities
- Construction
- Transport and logistics
- Manufacture of rubber and plastic products
- Manufacture of other non-metallic mineral products
- Manufacture of basic metals and fabricated metal products
- Manufacture of machinery and equipment
- Manufacture of transport equipment
TRL Focus
- TRL3 - Analytical and experimental critical function and/or characteristic proof of concept
- TRL4 - Component and/or breadboard validation in laboratory environment
- TRL5 - Component and/or breadboard validation in relevant environment
- TRL6 - System/subsystem model or prototype demonstration in a relevant environment
- TRL7 - System prototype demonstration in an operational environment
- TRL8 - Actual system completed and qualified through test and demonstration
- TRL9 - Actual system proven through successful mission operations
Services provided
- Awareness creation
- Ecosystem building, scouting, brokerage, networking
- Collaborative Research
- Concept validation and prototyping
- Pre-competitive series production
- Commercial infrastructure
- Incubator/accelerator support
Service Examples
Simulation and HPC technologies adoption, driving innovation-based competitiveness and industry decarbonising, is a shared challenge for EU industrial transformation. This is particularly critical for SME and so-called low-tech sectors as Construction for which both technology transfer and domain cross-fertilization have been identified as key elements for succeeding. The DIH, initially supporting Aerospace companies, has hence impulsed several support actions in that sense, jointly with the Belgian Building Research Institute and other industry clusters (CAP2020, Greenwin,...). Among those, they organized in the last 5 years, 5 “Simulation for Building & Energy Applications” regional exchange days and master classes, attracting more than 200+ companies (70+% of SME). This impulse also delivered success stories as the DIH accompanied Construction SME such as Stûv, to design a highly efficient and ergonomic pellet stove (awarded by Red dot award product design 2016), 3E, by further developing an IoT and model based predictive control platform for buildings energy management, Cover Group and 1Spatial, by automatically connecting simulation tools in their building frame modeler and GIS city database software for providing new applications through the Cloud,...
NUMECA is recognized for its leadership in market vertical and specific Computational Fluid Dynamics software and for its embedded deterministic & robust design optimization system. The DIH has developed a strategic partnership with NUMECA through the integration of Minamo, the design space exploration and optimization platform developed by the DIH, in the software environment of NUMECA. This offers to engineers the capability to efficiently optimize their products/processes with a very limited number of high fidelity simulations in order to broaden and gain full insight into their design space. The integrated solution covers a large variety of market applications, including Turbomachinery, Marine, Aeronautics and Multiphysics.
In the fierce competition between aero-engines manufacturers, the use of HPC at Safran Aero Boosters helps the company to stay with the world leaders. Over the last 10 years, the growth of HPC in the company has been exponential. It has allowed to reduce significantly the aerodynamical design cycles of boosters. It opens opportunities by investigating new architectures without having to wait for the tests. High performance computing is also used to evaluate the impact of manufacturing tolerances of the product and to reach an optimum in terms of production costs. The DIH supports Safran Aero Boosters in terms of HPC expertise and by making available its computing infrastructure.
Funding
- Horizon 2020
- European Regional Development Fund
- Regional funding
- Private funding
Customers
- Number of customers annually
- 26-50
- Type of customers
-
- Start-up companies
- SMEs (<250 employees)
- MidCaps (between €2-10 billion turnover)
- Large companies, multi-nationals
Partners
- Université de Liège (ULg)
- Université de Namur (UNamur)
- Entreprises wallonnes de l''aéronautique (EWA)
- Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB)
University
https://www.ulb.be/ - Université de Mons (UMons)
- Université catholique de Louvain (UCL)
- Intercommunale pour la Gestion et la Réalisation d''Etudes Techniques et Economiques (IGRETEC)
- Wallonia government