CD-adapco's STAR European Conference 2011 an Engineering Success

After two decades in London, CD-adapco's STAR European Conference 2011 moved to a seaside town just 20 minutes from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. Noordwijk was an ideal location for the conference this year. Travel to and from the Grand Hotel Huis ter Duin was a breeze for CD-adapco’s European customers and the beach view didn’t hurt either.

The theme of CD-adapco’s STAR conferences for 2011 is “Engineering Success.” The presentations given and attendees’ feedback from the STAR European Conference have already proved this theme to be very appropriate.

During his welcome speech, CD-adapco’s Senior Vice President, Bill Clark, said, “CD-adapco's purpose is to inspire innovation while reducing costs through the application of engineering simulation.” He reported, “We are on track to meet our target of $135 Million end user spend and have seen an organic growth of 17-20% over past 5 years.

The latest customer satisfaction survey shows 95% of CD-adapco customers are satisfied with CD-adapco Software and Services and 97% of customers would recommend CD-adapco.” These numbers are very encouraging in supporting the continuing growth and reinvestment into the company.

Dr. Line Gulstad, Manager, Global Flow Solutions, Wind and Site Competence Centre for Vestas Technology R&D was the Keynote Speaker at the conference and presented how Vestas has achieved Engineering Success by working with CD-adapco. Dr. Gulstad complimented the excellent service and support CD-adapco has provided for over a number of years. She continued, "CD-adapco has certainly inspired innovation at Vestas."

The STAR European Conference was also the official release event for STAR-CCM+ v6, the latest, greatest, version of CD-adapco’s flagship simulation tool. Attendees learned firsthand from experts at the STAR-CCM+ Lab and were equipped with a wealth of hints and tricks to make their own CAE process more effective from the outset.

An exciting session during the conference was when CD-adapco displayed its Discrete Element Modeling (DEM) feature in STAR-CCM+ v6 by playing a lottery to win an iPad. The engineers presenting the feature had used STAR-CCM+ to model and run a simulation of a lottery machine selecting numbered balls. The attendee with the matching numbers in his proceedings booklet won. The winner was Dr. Heinrich Reister from Daimler AG.

Ultimately, because the STAR European Conference 2011 was such an “Engineering Success,” CD-adapco has decided to return for the STAR European Conference 2012.