1. Welcomed to the World Economic Forum’s Technology Pioneer community
Akselos was selected to be part of this coveted community, that once nurtured companies like Google and Spotify in their early years. Members are selected for their involvement in the design, development and deployment of new technologies and innovations that are poised to have a significant impact on business and society. Members are invited to join various Forum initiatives to contribute to world-shaping discussions. Since joining in June, we’ve been involved in a number of critical projects like INFRASTRUCTURE 4.0 and SHARE TO GAIN: UNLOCKING DATA VALUE IN MANUFACTURING. With COP 26 approaching in November 2021, next year we will become more involved in discussions about decarbonizing multiple industries.
2. Solidified our partnership with Shell through an Enterprise Framework Agreement
Shell has been instrumental in our development over the years, both as an investor and a customer. We’ve worked closely with technology implementation teams to deploy our tech on fixed and floating assets with excellent results. With successful deployments delivered, our technology was validated as a preferred solution for structural assessment in a three-year enterprise framework agreement. The agreement covers all of Shell’s global assets across the energy spectrum, so there’s a lot of potentials.
3. Deployed the world’s first holistic, large-scale structural digital twin
Shell’s Bonga FPSO in Nigeria is massive. Weighing in at a mighty 300,000 tonnes, and about as long as The Eiffel Tower is tall, it’s one of the largest FPSOs in the world. In the mechanical engineering world the ability to create a holistic, accurate digital twin of an asset of this size, that’s powerful enough to integrate sensor data and update in near real-time, is without a doubt revolutionary. We were super proud to complete the project this year, which turned out to be more important than ever as the pandemic intensified the need for remote access.
4. DIGIFLOAT: Creating a structural digital twin of the WindFloat Atlantic – one of the world’s first floating wind farms
Floating wind has the potential to provide enough renewable electricity to power our world 18 times over – it could truly be the hero in the energy transition. The challenge is to lower the cost to below that of fossil fuels, and to ensure scalability of deployment as fast as possible. That’s what this project is going to realise. Together with a consortium of partners led by Principle Power and including EDPR, the American Bureau of Shipping and the US Navy, we’re developing a digital twin of the 25MW wind farm to achieve optimal design and maximized efficiency, making it increasingly competitive in terms of cost and performance.
5. Digital twins for the next generation of aerospace ready for take-off
Our modern world is screaming for a revolution in aircraft design. Low carbon skies, safer, supersonic travel and interplanetary exploration all require innovation that will render the aircraft we see around us today almost unrecognisable. We’re all really excited by the potential our technology has to design the future of flight, and it was great to see that the American Institute of Aeronautics and Aerospaceagrees. Our research in partnership with the Oden Institute and MIT, received the ‘best paper’ award at the 2020 SciTech Forum – the industry’s most prestigious conference.
6. The Swiss Innovation Agency backs our extreme engineering for offshore wind
Did you know that today’s most powerful wind turbines can weigh as much as ten Boeing Dreamliner 787s? We can’t continue to increase the size of turbines in parallel with the increase in capacity. Wind turbine designs need to be completely optimised for the energy transition, and together with the brilliant team at EPFL we were thrilled to receive $1m from The Swiss Innovation Agency to further develop computational tools for wind turbine design and assessment.
7. Agreed distributor deal with Lamprell for assets in the Middle East and Africa
“The accuracy and reliability we have been able to achieve in asset design is remarkable as there is no limitation in terms of size or complexity of the models we create. The results are optimised, providing more accurate designs and reduced CAPEX for our customers.” An excellent endorsement of the power of our technology from Lamprell CEO Chris McDonald. Lamprell has proven to be one of our most disruptive partners, already well on their way to full digital transformation.