Trends in Computational Nanomechanics

Situated at the intersection of Computational Chemistry, Solid State Physics, and Mechanical Engineering, Computational Nanomechanics has emerged as a new interdisciplinary research area that has already played a pivotal role in understanding the complex mechanical response of the nano-scale. Many important nanomechanical problems concern phenomena contained in the microscopic or the continuum phenomenological scale. Thus, they can be simulated with traditional computational approaches, such as molecular dynamics (for the microscopic scale) and finite elements (for the continuum scale). More recently, significant advances in computational methodologies have made it possible to go beyond the distinct approaches mentioned above. By seamlessly linking the previously separated discipline methodologies, multi-scale aspects of the behaviour of nano-materials can now be simulated and studied from both fundamental and engineering-application viewpoints.