Italian startup FloFleet S.R.L. is developing a solar-powered floating helium airship that can remain in flight for a week and carry payloads of up to 8 kg (17.5 pounds) with zero emissions. While overcoming the limitations of traditional drones and replacing the expense and fossil fuel emissions of helicopters, FloFleet airships will carry heavier payloads while enabling longer-term infrastructure surveillance, disaster assessments, search and rescue, event streaming, agriculture and cartography with flights of over 200 km (124 miles).
The innovative, inflated-wing shape not only provides aerodynamic lift but also allows more surface area for solar panels. The airships are completely autonomous, so they don’t require a pilot, not even from the ground.
After completing his thesis on stratospheric platforms, FloFleet CEO Andrea Cecchi founded the startup in mid-2022. The FloFleet airship is filled with helium and travels via four electric motors powered by solar panels on top of the aircraft. The vehicle control devices, thermal imaging cameras and other sensors can be installed in the lower part of the airship. FloFleet’s design and engineering team members learned SOLIDWORKS® design software as students at Politecnico di Milano, so it was an easy decision to leverage solutions from the 3DEXPERIENCE® Works portfolio that operates on the cloud-based 3DEXPERIENCE platform—all a part of the SOLIDWORKS for Startups program.
Testing in a Virtual Environment
The team relied on the 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS Simulation Designer to solve the considerable engineering challenge of defining the aircraft’s volumes and surfaces and achieving the correct balance between load capacity, autonomy and weight.
“As a startup, we do not have large economic resources available to invest and we have found the software simulation offered by the Startup Program an excellent solution for modeling the airship and carrying out tests and evaluations in a virtual environment,”
Andrea Cecchi, FlowFleet CEO/Founder.
Enhancing Collaboration and Speeding Development
With the transparent 3DEXPERIENCE data management solution in the cloud, the design team accurately modeled every part of the airship, including the engines, supports, and sensors, and then assigned each the relevant material and mechanical characteristics to evaluate their behavior. “This not only allowed us to reduce costs but also speeded up the subsequent development phases,” Cecchi notes.
3DEXPERIENCE Works solutions enhanced the FloFleet team’s collaboration and spurred development because they enable collaboration even when team members work in different locations. CTO Andrea Buson notes, “In fact, the license is not associated with the single computer but with the user; therefore, with a simple login on the portal, it can be downloaded on multiple machines.”
By using 3DEXPERIENCE Works solutions, FloFleet accelerated airship development, reduced development costs, eliminated repetitive prototyping cycles, and enhanced collaboration. FloFleet completed its proof-of-concept prototype in late 2022 and delivered its first commercial version in 2024.
“We continue to use 3DEXPERIENCE Works solutions at FloFleet both because it is a complete software and a very powerful suite, of which we will probably also use other applications in the future, and because it has proven to be very flexible.”
Andrea Buson, FlowFleet CTO.
SOLIDWORKS for Startups
The SOLIDWORKS for Startups program offers free SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD, simulation, data management and other product development software that scales with your startup needs. The program participants also benefit from free training, co-marketing resources and networking opportunities. Apply now and see if your startup qualifies.
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