Computational Fluid and Solid Mechanics

The MIT mission - "to bring together Industry and Academia and to nurture the next generation in computational mechanics is of great importance to reach the new level of mathematical modeling and numerical solution and to provide an exciting research environment for the next generation in computational mechanics."

Mathematical modeling and numerical solution is today firmly established in science and engineering. Research conducted in almost all branches of scientific investigations and the design of systems in practically all disciplines of engineering can not be pursued effectively without, frequently, intensive analysis based on numerical computations.


The world we live in has been classified by the human mind, for descriptive and analysis purposes, to consist of fluids and solids, continua and molecules; and the analyses of fluids and solids at the continuum and molecular scales have traditionally been pursued separately. Fundamentally, however, there are only molecules and particles for any material that interact on the microscopic and macroscopic scales. Therefore, to unify the analysis of physical systems and to reach a deeper understanding of the behavior of nature in scientific investigations, and of the behavior of designs in engineering endeavors, a new level of analysis is necessary.

This new level of mathematical modeling and numerical solution does not merely involve the analysis of a single medium but must encompass the solution of multi-physics problems involving fluids, solids, and their interactions, involving multi-scale phenomena from the molecular to the macroscopic scales, and must include uncertainties in the given data and the solution results. Nature does not distinguish between fluids and solids and does not ever repeat itself exactly.

This new level of analysis must also include, in engineering, the effective optimization of systems, and the modeling and analysis of complete life spans of engineering products, from design to fabrication, to possibly multiple repairs, to end of service.