International Partner Search

Innovation & Technology Request

Spanish software company is looking for a load-bearing structures manufacturer to assist in the improving and validating of a disruptive server of optimisation for anisogrid structures.

Country of Origin: Spain
Reference Number: TRES20190513001
Publication Date: 13 May 2019

Summary

A Spanish software development company, specialised in developing tailored software, is looking for a manufacturing company specialised in the construction of load-bearing structures  as wind turbine towers, high voltage towers or telecommunication towers, to assist in the improvement and validation of the server, e.g. by providing real data for validation or feedback to improve performance.
The company would like to reach a technical cooperation agreement.

Description

A Spanish software development company with extensive knowledge about new technologies, digital environment and tailored solutions for all types of clients, are involved in the development of a disruptive server, based on in a specific on-line solution for the automated sizing of anisogrid structures. It is specially intended for assisting both aerospace and earth engineers at early design stages to choose the optimal solution for their load bearing structures. 



Anisogrid structures are lattice structures of intersecting bars that usually form cylindrical or conical shells. Aerospace industry has already realized this and is including these structures in the last versions of their rocket designs, e.g. the European Vega, Proton, or Ariane. 

  

With this new server, anisogrid structures will provide important cost-savings in the bigger earth markets, concretely in most load-bearing structures that contain plates, panels, cones, or tubes, for example, the towers for electricity transport, wind power generation and telecommunications, the offshore lattice structures, and the tallest buildings. They would be more weight-efficient and improve performance if fabricated in anisogrid and optimized. 







Current approaches for anisogrid design are expensive and slow. The state-of-the-art commercial software is general purpose and relies on the computationally demanding Finite Element Analysis (FEA) with manual or semi-automated optimization schemes. Space companies must devote many highly qualified engineer-hours in optimizing anisogrid structures and assuring the accuracy of the predicted models using all-purpose and costly commercial Finite Elements (FE) software (3,000-30,000 €/yr·license). This difficulties and even prevents the general adoption of the very efficient anisogrid design concept, specially by the most modest and abundant European SMEs.



The company seeks industrial partners from earth and space markets for a technical cooperation agreement in the improvement and validation of the server, e.g. by providing real data for validation or feedback to improve performance. Free licenses and tailored support will be provided for.



Competitive advantages:

•From 10 to 40% weight reduction in comparison with all commercial alternatives.

•Drastic savings in design and optimization cost, time, and computational resources. 

•Easy to use and interactive.

•SaaS (Software as a Service, i.e. a web server), no installation or configuration issues, ready for all devices.

Expertise sought

For the technical validation of optimization server, the company confidentially request the approximate technical specifications of some already developed or commercialized tower-like product to compare with. For example, in the field of wind or electricity transport towers, the principal load cases that determine design (e.g. resonance frequencies, maximum axial and transverse forces, and wind or seismic actions according to the relevant construction codes) and the basic geometrical properties (e.g. height, width, etc...) are sought. With this data the company pretends to generate several optimized models according to the anisogrid and tubular designs.

Requested partner

- Type of partner sought:

Industrial partners from earth and space markets.



- Specific area of activity of the partner:

Manufacturers of the towers for electricity transport, wind power generation and telecommunications, the offshore lattice structures, and the tallest buildings.



- Task to be performed:

To assist in the improvement and validation of the server under a technical cooperation agreement.