WaPT (pronounced « wapiti »), standing for « Wake Prediction Technologies », provides solutions to wake-related issues for aeronautical and wind energy applications.
For aeronautical applications, WaPT experts use their know-how and wake modeling tools to support the definition, the refinement and the certification of new operational concepts for air traffic management. The application of these new concepts should allow air traffic controllers to cope with airport congestion issues directly related to the current air traffic increase.
Wake-related issues are also found in wind energy applications. Leveraging its simulation tools and expertise, WaPT provides solutions to challenges related to various aspects of power production optimization. The simulation results are valuable at all stages of wind farm design and operation — from blade and rotor design to turbine layout optimization, performance assessment and optimization of existing farms, and predictive maintenance.
As a spin-off company from UCLouvain, WaPT benefits from state-of-the-art technology and extensive know-how in wake flow modeling, analysis, and numerical simulation developed for more than 15 years in the research teams of Prof. Philippe Chatelain and Prof. Grégoire Winckelmans. At WaPT, we use and further developed two types of numerical simulation software : operational modeling tools (very fast, using simplified “engineering” models) and advanced numerical simulation tools (robust and efficient for high-performance parallel computing – HPC).