Coppe and Delp promote national technology for offshore wind generation
Planeta COPPE / Energy / Ocean Engineering / Program / News
Date: 16/10/2025
Coppe/UFRJ and Delp Engenharia have initiated a strategic project focused on developing and validating innovative anchoring solutions for offshore wind turbines—one of the pillars of the energy transition and the sustainable expansion of Brazil’s electricity grid. The study focuses on improving torpedo piles, an internationally recognized Brazilian technology essential for securing floating structures, both in offshore wind power generation and in oil and gas exploration.
The initiative combines academic excellence and industrial capacity around a common goal: to strengthen Brazil’s technological base in an emerging segment with great economic and environmental potential. Reduced-scale physical models—machined and 3D printed—will be tested in the current channel of the Wave and Current Laboratory (LOC), linked to Coppe’s Ocean Engineering Program (PEnO). These experiments will allow the validation of advanced numerical models and generate unprecedented data on the hydrodynamic behavior of structures in oceanic environments.
Under the coordination of Professor Joel Sales, the Coppe team will apply Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) techniques and time-domain simulations, combined with experimental tests under controlled conditions. This integrated modeling and experimentation approach reinforces Coppe’s vocation as a center of reference in ocean engineering and technological innovation.
Torpedo piles—steel pile-shaped anchors driven to great depths—represent a genuinely Brazilian innovation that has revolutionized the offshore sector. By combining construction simplicity, efficiency and robustness, they have established themselves as a high-performance solution for risers, FPSOs (floating production, storage and offloading units)—vessels that process and store oil and gas at the extraction site—and, more recently, floating wind platforms, expanding the frontiers of clean energy use at sea.
Delp Engenharia is one of Brazil’s largest engineering and manufacturing companies for heavy steel equipment. Founded in 1964, it operates across all stages—from engineering and detailing to industrial assembly and equipment delivery—with a strong presence in the oil and gas sectors and, now, in new energy frontiers such as offshore wind.
The partnership with Coppe reinforces both institutions’ commitment to integrating science, industry and sustainability, solidifying Brazil’s leading role in the technological race for the energy of the future.
