Workshop III: Mesoscale and Continuum Scale Modeling of Materials Defects

November 13 - 16, 2012

Overview

Nearly all engineered materials have microstructures which suffer defects, either by nature or by design. These defects play a major role in the properties and function of a materialuntitled as well as lifetime properties. Their complexity render analysis and simulation important to their investigation. This workshop will focus on four broad classes of materials defects: grain boundaries, cracks, dislocation dynamics, and point defects like vacancies and interstitials. Many of these types of defects have been studied from the point of view of continuum elasticity. Increasingly, however, it is desirable to understand atomic scale details of such phenomena and to understand how mesoscale theory can predict features of macroscopic behavior. Mesoscale models such as Kinetic Monte Carlo, Phase-Field Crystal, and Quasi-Continuum models offer the potential to resolve these details on length and time scales that can make contact with the macro-scale and corresponding continuum theories. Moreover, the discovery of new network level properties, like the Grain Boundary Character Distribution, enlarge the role of both analysis and simulation methods. Important questions concerning the relationship between such models remain to be answered.

It is the goal of this workshop to bring together mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists, materials scientists and engineers who work in the area of materials defects. We expect this workshop will attract junior as well as senior participants.

This workshop will include a poster session; a request for posters will be sent to registered participants in advance of the workshop.

Organizing Committee

Nasr Ghoniem (University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA))
David Kinderlehrer (Carnegie-Mellon University)
John Lowengrub (University of California, Irvine (UCI))
Nele Moelans (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)
Vivek Shenoy (Brown University)