GSea Design is attending the Salon du Bourget (Bourget Air Show) this week. It’s a first for the Lorient-based company, which sees it as a great opportunity to develop its business in the domain of aeronautics.
GSea Design has already had the opportunity to put its expertise to good use in several aerial projects, most notably in a mission for Airbus and for the landing gear structure on Nijal, a prototype plane made from composite materials.
“We’re not novices in this field. Indeed, there are parallels between aeronautics and race boats, particularly so since they have been using foils. Aeronautics may enable some interesting technology transfer and we might be able to work with the R&D departments of some large companies from this sector”, explains Benjamin Madec, Business Engineer. “We’re among the first to have worked on fixed wings for boats and on foils, which enable them to fly. We’ve had a lot fewer constraints in terms of certification on race boats than on planes, though things are tending to get a bit tighter today. This has enabled us to have complete freedom to explore, to carry out a huge number of tests and to make very quick progress”.
Expertise and responsiveness
Today, GSea Design’s expertise and responsiveness are two key assets capable of attracting the R&D departments of some of the flagships of aeronautics: “When you fine-tune a boat, between the point where you make the decision to do it and the launch, there’s a very short amount of time; it’s much tighter a timeframe than in aeronautics. As such, we know how to respond to problems quickly and that’s an important factor in terms of the research and innovation in aeronautics. We’ve developed some fast, high-performance tools to ensure we respond quickly. This tooling, which has been fine-tuned for the structural calculations on foils for example, can be rapidly adapted to the calculations on wings.”
Benjamin Madec is heading to Le Bourget to explore a whole new world then, which might well become a great showcase for GSea Design. The Lorient-based company is in a position to work with aviation companies directly or as a subcontractor for the yards.
[The Salon du Bourget runs through to Sunday 23 June. GSea Design is exhibiting there with four other companies from the Eurolage network, which has been invited to attend by the Breton Region.]
