Departments

Theoretical Chemistry (Life Science)

Computational modelling and simulation are increasingly becoming indispensable tools in various branches of life sciences, covering biological processes that transcend many scales in both length and time. Nowadays, we find essential input from modelling in bioareas as different as population dynamics of species, protein folding and catalytic processes at a scale where each atom makes a difference. 

Materials Science

Materials science, if defined in terms of length scales, spans the five decades from nanometers to hundreds of micrometers. While traditional materials engineering deals with continuum models on the large scale, the effective properties are determined by features on the small scale such as dislocations, grains, precipitations, and even molecules and atoms. Quantum-mechanical simulations play an important role in materials science at the nano-end of the length scale, for instance in order to understand dislocations, magnetism, crystal structure, surface structure, and catalytic behavior

Mechanics (Fluid Systems)

The simulation of the behavior of fluid systems is now at a point where it is possible to perform large scale numerical experiments for realistic flow cases. For example, the noise generation in turbulent jets can today be simulated via numerical solutions of the full Navier-Stokes equations.

Numerical Analysis (Engineering Design and Optimization)

Engineering professional practices are driven by market pressures for higher performance products and by demands for radically shortened design cycles and flexible design and production processes. At the same time, technical advances in computers and communications hold out the promise of rapid assembly - and dispersal - of development teams with expertise on all relevant aspects, instant cooperation and concurrent access to all available information. Virtual product development, mathematical modelling, computer simulation and multi-disciplinary optimization have become indispensable tools for engineering enterprizes.