From Mar. 22-23, 2017, The first Sino-France Conference on Numerical Tank Communication and Cooperation was held in école Centrale de Nantes (France). Prof. Wenyang Duan, who is the chief architect of the Numerical Tank Innovation Program and a Chang Jiang Scholar of Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, and his colleagues working on Numeric Tank technology in Harbin Engineering University attended the conference and signed a memorandum of cooperation.

Prof. Pierre Ferrand of the école Centrale de Nantes (France) hosted the conference. The representatives from France, including France BV Classification Society, école Centrale de Nantes (France), Hydrocean company and other French institutes; and the representatives from the China, including Harbin Engineering University, No. 702 Institute of CSIC, No. 708 Institute of CSSC, Shanghai Jiaotong University, and Dalian University of Technology and other Chinese institutes participated the conference.

Prof. Wenyang Duan of Harbin Engineering University gave a general introduction on the Chinese Numerical Tank programs to the audiences. The two sides from China and France exchanged in depth on specific technologies of Numerical Tank. They also discussed the mechanism of exchange and cooperation of the two sides. They signed a memorandum of cooperation, in which the two sides agreed to carry out in-depth cooperation in the areas of joint training of talents, exchange of physical model, test database, verification of virtual test results, certification of Virtual Experiment System Classification Society. Both sides also agreed for the promotion of government supports and funds.

With a total investment about 270 million yuan, the "Numerical Tank Innovation Special (a)" , led by the Harbin Engineering University , has jointly approved by Chinese Ministry of Industry and Ministry of Finance in 2016. As the main participants, Institutes and Universities from China, France, America, UK, Japan have composed the international research team that can represent global frontier of research on numerical tank.