The Emerging Role of Multiscale Modeling in Nano- and Micro-mechanics of Materials

As a result of surging interest in finding fundamental descriptions for the strength and failure properties of materials, and the exciting prospects of designing materials from their atomic level, an international symposium on Multiscale Modeling was convened in Los Angeles during August 23 25, 2000. In this symposium, 23 speakers with research interests spanning fields as diverse as traditional mechanics, physics, chemistry and materials science have given talks at this symposium. The topics of discussion were focused on sub-continuum modeling of the mechanics of materials, taking into account the atomic structure of solid materials. The main motivation of the symposium was the realization of the limitations of current continuum mechanics modeling approaches (e.g. the finite element method (FEM)) to describe the behavior of materials at scales smaller than tens of microns. The speakers represented the international scientific community in different countries, and utilized diverse simulation and modeling tools for sub-continuum systems. The discussions covered Ab Initio quantum simulations (e.g., density functional theory and tight-binding methods), atomistic simulations using empirical many-body interatomic potentials, Monte Carlo methods, mesoscopic statistical and dislocation dynamics, and advanced continuum field equation approaches. In this article, we provide a perspective on the variety of methods presented at the symposium, and a vision for future developments in multiscale simulations for nanoand micromechanics of materials.