Case Study: Bausch + Lomb achieves faster design cycles, reduced development costs and improved cataract surgery outcomes with Dassault Systèmes SIMULIA (Abaqus FEA)

Visualizes cataract surgery with SIMULIA

Bausch + Lomb needed to better understand the complex engineering of cataract surgery—how deformable intraocular lenses (IOLs), inserters and tiny incisions interact—in order to enable smaller incisions (targeting as small as 1 mm), improve surgical outcomes, and reduce development risk. To address phenomena that cannot be measured directly, Bausch + Lomb used Dassault Systemes’ SIMULIA solution, specifically Abaqus FEA (with CAD models from SolidWorks), to simulate lens deformation, inserter contact and insertion forces.

Dassault Systemes’ Abaqus FEA enabled Bausch + Lomb to build validated, high‑fidelity models (≈250,000 elements, five‑hour solves on a Cray CX1) whose force‑vs‑displacement and peak‑strain predictions (strains up to ~60% and locations matching observed rare failures) correlated well with physical tests. Those validated simulations helped Bausch + Lomb reduce design iterations, shorten time to market, lower development costs and improve product performance and surgical outcomes while guiding next‑generation IOL materials and inserter geometries.

Bausch + Lomb

Kavita Bijlani

Senior Manager, IT