PDE and Materials

Abstract

This meeting brought together a carefully selected group of mathematicians, physicists, material scientists and engineers to discuss and review the impact of modern mathematical methods on the understanding of material behaviour and the design of new materials. A key issue is that the material behaviour is determined by physical processes at many different spatial and temporal scales which cannot be simulataneously resolved by brute force computation. Central themes of the meeting were (spatial) microstructures, the relation between atomistic and continuum models, the treatment of multiple temporal scales, and the influence of randomness and the use of methods from statistical mechanics.