SIMULIA’s own Ross McLendon, SIMULIA R&D Structures Application Senior Manager, Mikhail Belyi, SIMULIA R&D Structures Technology Director, Prashanth Vijalapura, SIMULIA R&D Structures Software Engineering Director & Sandeep Kulathu, Senior Development Manager, presented at the 2026 SIMULIA Americas Users Conference.
Abstract
Whether leveraging structures MODSIM capabilities on 3DEXPERIENCE or running analyses using our Established Product portfolio, Abaqus technology is the living heart of SIMULIA structural simulation. In this presentation are many of the enhancements that have been made in Abaqus and related technologies over the past year.
- Introduction, CAE, Cloud, & HPC - This brief presentation will open the session with a high-level update overview of Abaqus and some additional details of enhancements in Abaqus/CAE, Cloud, and recent advances for HPC and co-simulation.
- Solvers & Linear Dynamics - This segment will cover updates to our implicit solver technology and linear dynamics capabilities in Abaqus/Standard.
- Contact & Constraints - This segment covers updates and improvements to our contact and constraints capabilities in Abaqus/Standard and /Explicit.
Nonlinear Mechanics - This segment covers updates to Nonlinear Mechanics technology in Abaqus/Standard and Abaqus/Explicit including materials modeling, coupled multiphysics, element technology, particle methods, fracture, and more.
Presenters:
Ross McLendon
SIMULIA R&D Structures Application Senior Manager - Dassault Systèmes
Ross MCLENDON serves as the product manager for the Abaqus FEA structural solvers and Abaqus/CAE interactive product within the SIMULIA Structures R&D organization in Johnston, Rhode Island (USA). He joined Dassault Systèmes in 2013 as a member of the back-end mechanics support team after completing his Ph.D. in aerospace engineering at Texas A&M University where he studied composite mechanics. During his time in support he led the development of the Micromechanics Plugin for Abaqus/CAE, after which he moved into the R&D organization as a developer for materials and then material calibration before taking on the Product Manager role. He works closely with the Abaqus development teams while collaborating with customers and the field and sales organizations to help ensure that the Abaqus FEA structural solvers at the heart of all DS structural simulation continue to deliver the class-leading capabilities needed to solve DS customer’s most challenging engineering mechanics problems.
Mikhail Belyi
SIMULIA R&D Structures Technology Director - Dassault Systèmes
As a Research and Development Director at Dassault Systèmes Mikhail Belyi leads equation solvers, eigensolvers, linear dynamics and substructure functionality development in Abaqus/Standard. Mikhail holds PhD and Doctor of Technical Sciences degrees in Computational Structural Mechanics from Moscow University of Civil Engineering and has 40+ years’ experience of simulation software development.
Prashanth Vijalapura
SIMULIA R&D Structures Software Engineering Director - Dassault Systèmes
Prashanth has been with Dassault Systèmes since 2004. In his core R&D role focused on code development, he has contributed to multiple Contact Technology feature enhancements in Abaqus. He holds advanced degrees in applied mechanics from Rice University and the University of California, Berkeley.
Sandeep Kulathu
Senior Development Manager - Dassault Systèmes
Sandeep Kulathu is a Senior Development Manager leading the Abaqus Multiphysics and Explicit Technology team at Dassault Systèmes Americas Corp. He holds a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Engineering from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His primary area of expertise is computational solid mechanics, with a focus on developing advanced, fully coupled simulation capabilities across a range of applications. These include lithium-ion and solid-state batteries, additive manufacturing, wellbore and hydraulic fracturing, hi-tech and life science applications.
Over the past 15 years, he has played a key role in advancing the Multiphysics simulation capabilities of the finite element software Abaqus.
