Tortoise

Tortoise is i-Lab 2018 Grand Prize winner. The company is raising matching funds to execute the product development program that has been awarded in this competition.

Tortoise develops and commercializes technologies that characterize mechanical properties of a material through a simple and non-destructive analysis of a small broken sample. Its owns exclusive rights on a patented fractography method that determines, quantitatively and locally in any point of the fracture surface, mechanical properties such as toughness, force applied at failure or crack propagation speed and direction.

Information generated by Tortoise's algorithms are entirely unprecedented and create novel opportunities, with applications ranging from failure analysis, material development, manufacturing control, preventive maintenance or prospection of fossil resources.

Tortoise ordered from CETIM a comparative study to estimate how accurate its technology can determine mechanical properties commonly used in the industry. In this study, CETIM provided broken samples of steel alloys and submitted Tortoise to a blind test. Using its post-mortem analysis, Tortoise estimated toughness values that deviated only by 1% in comparison to values given by standard mechanical tests performed by CETIM.