The objective of this workshop is to bring together international experts in engineering, mathematics, and physics to have an open discussion on the possibility of multiscale modeling for engineering applications, and the potential and shortcomings of existing mathematical and physical approaches for solving such problems. A set of talented graduate students will be invited to these deliberations by open competition. The workshop will be held over three days in the latter half of September, 2011. Fifteen international experts will be invited to give lectures and participate in a panel discussion. A student poster session will be held for which fifteen students will be selected. In addition, ten other technical participants will be invited in the audience. Lecturers and student participants will be provided partial financial assistance. A Workshop reception and a banquet are planned as social events.
The societal benefit of the proposed workshop lies in the fact that it is driven by core engineering-application-needs, but intends to involve pre-eminent mathematicians and physicists in a dialog with engineers to foster a three-way cross fertilization of ideas and practical methodology to address perhaps the most important problem of modern science and technology. The workshop is expected to produce a basis for understanding and evaluating multiscale modeling methodology that can serve as a common inter-disciplinary standard for the future and lead to strong collaborations between engineers, mathematicians, and physicists. Education of students in a non-standard but meaningful and prestigious format will take place.
A Workshop on "Averaging Methods for Multiscale Phenomena in Engineering Materials" was held from April 2 - 4 at Carnegie Mellon University. The objective of the Workshop was to bring together international experts in engineering, mathematics, and physics to have an open discussion on the possibility of multiscale modeling for engineering applications and the potential and shortcomings of existing mathematical and physical approaches for solving such problems. It was also the goal to expose a select set of talented graduate students to these deliberations, and encourage them in their research by providing them appropriate opportunity to display their own work in multiscale modeling. The hope was to assemble an interdisciplinary group of individuals to debate the core technical issues in perhaps the most important question of modern science and technology. A primary goal was to go beyond the hype associated with popular renditions of the potential of multiscale modeling and appraise its possibilities in concrete terms through the participation of experts familiar with specific methodologies in this vast and difficult subject. The workshop was driven by core engineering-application-needs, but intended to involve pre-eminent mathematicians and physicists in a dialog with engineers to foster a three-way cross-fertilization of ideas and practical methodology. By all accounts of all those who participated, the Workshop was a great success. There was plentiful meaningful interaction and exchange of ideas and discussion between the intended groups of participants. In particular, the presence of an excellent group of graduate students and their posters enhanced the meeting content. The Workshop Agenda, and Lecture and poster abstracts can be found on the following websites: www.ices.cmu.edu/cm2em-workshop/agenda.html www.ices.cmu.edu/cm2em-workshop/abstracts.html www.ices.cmu.edu/cm2em-workshop/posters.html Workshop Recommendations: 1) A primary recommendation of the Workshop is for agencies like NSF to provide sustained funding for long term research on the difficult issues of bridging length and time scales in materials modeling. 2) Mathematical and Physical theories like the General theory of Homogenization, the Renormalization Group, the general principles of the dynamics of continuum theories with defects, quantum mechanics, and the details of molecular dynamics simulations, are difficult subjects for any single engineer, physicist or a mathematician to grasp, in order to make a rational assessment of what may be needed or is applicable to further one’s own research or the field itself. Thus support is required for experts to get together to write textbooks at different levels of sophistication to enable this process of understanding and assessment. 3) The community at large needs to agree on, and define, an adequate set of benchmark problems by which emerging models for predicting multiscale phenomena can be judged.
