Welcome
The Institute came into being in 2012 through the creation of a new Chair for Materials Simulation at the Department of Materials Science of Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg. Materials Simulation, which is the eighth chair in materials at FAU (WW8) is also the first to be located in the town of Fürth. The Chair offers courses in Materials Simulation at undergraduate and graduate levels for students of the Materials Science, Nanotechnology, and Computational Engineering degree programmes as well as for the Elite Master degree programme “Advanced Materials and Processes”.
Research at WW8 focuses on modelling and simulation of mechanical and transport properties of a broad range of materials – from nanocomposites, micro-and nanowires to biomaterials and hazards related to materials failure in geosystems. Our modelling and simulation approaches are strongly influenced by concepts and ideas deriving from statistical physics/complex systems theory which help us to deal with the properties of real materials where structural disorder, defects and randomness are always present — and may give rise to a rich variety of emergent phenomena. We ask how to explain and predict such phenomena, and how to exploit them for improving robustness and performance of materials, and for designing and fabricating materials with novel functionalities.