The 4th annual European HTC will highlight the latest trends, developments and applications in the field of enterprise CAE and will showcase cutting-edge methods, applications and industry examples of CAE-driven innovations. Presentations from Altair aerospace customers – including Airbus, MT Aerospace, AugustaWestland, EADS and Eurocopter – will examine how the aerospace industry is leveraging structural design optimization and simulation technology to drive innovation, weight reduction and improved designs.

"Weight reduction for increased payload and range of aircraft systems is increasingly important for the aerospace industry," said Pietro Cervellera, director of aerospace business development at Altair. "To stay profitable, commercial aircraft must carry more passengers, defense aircraft must carry more cargo, and both must have greater range. The increased adoption of highly integrated and automated CAE tools like HyperWorks will be essential for the industry to achieve these desired results."

HyperWorks offers a suite of CAE tools for minimum-weight design, stress analysis, and mechanism and vulnerability simulation for metallic and composite structures. Aerospace customers that have employed HyperWorks and its simulation-driven design processes, enabled by a strategic combination of Altair experience, technology and methods, have reported an average of 15 percent weight reduction for products while shortening the product design and development cycle by up to 50 percent.

"The aerospace industry is striving to meet increasingly stringent testing requirements to ensure greater passenger safety and survivability of aircraft," said Robert Yancey, executive director of global aerospace at Altair. "As a result, there is a strong movement toward advanced simulation methods for bird strike events, ditching, debris impact, and hard landings to evaluate the impact on the structural performance of the aircraft and occupant protection systems. Altair's RADIOSS solver is widely recognized as a preferred industry solution for these types of complex safety analyses, and when employed early in the design process, optimization and advanced simulation technology allow engineers to achieve the best possible design that meets certification requirements."

At the 2010 European HTC, Airbus Optimization Center Leader Andrea-Ivan Marasco will offer a keynote address on "The Airbus A350XWB Optimization Centre: An Optimization Deployment Model," that will highlight how Airbus is leveraging optimization for weight reduction and design efficiency of the A350XWB aircraft through a tight partnership with Altair Engineering. The conference will feature several other keynote presentations – from Altair, Peugeot Sport Association, Ford, solidThinking, Bombardier, Faurecia, Volvo 3P, Nissan and Intel – and more than 90 presentations where technology thought leaders will discuss industry trends that are enabling product innovation through optimization and simulation-driven design.

The 2010 European HTC follows on the heels of the 2010 Americas HTC, held in April, where several leaders from the North American aerospace community, including Boeing, Airborne Systems, GE Aviation, NASA and Sikorsky, discussed CAE strategies and advancements to address today's aerospace design challenges.

HTC is Altair's premier annual event and is free for all attendees. For more information and to register, visit http://www.altairhtc.com/europe/EHTC10RegistrationForm.aspx.