Executive Summary

Computational Materials Engineering is the modelling of a material system through its fundamental physical equations under experimental conditions to further help understand and predict the behaviour of emergent mechanisms.

Computational Materials Engineering represents a paradigm shift in materials science methodologies as new career paths within the academic and industrial regimes are defined.

Made possible through the many modern advances in computational power, computational models of material systems are becoming of higher and higher resolution, more capable of reflecting and expanding on physical experimental data.

These computational simulations, in allowing for a more fundamental understanding of structure-process-property relationships, effectively serves to optimize the optimization of an engineering design by displaying the underlying factors of a material’s performance in its use environment.

Academia and industry both play important roles in the advancement of computational methodologies. The vast benefits of computational materials engineering has led to large amounts of capital being poured into research from government and private-industrial sources alike. The attention being paid to this growing sub-field lends to the idea that it is becoming an increasingly viable career path in materials science engineering.

As computational methods are becoming such an integral part of the profession, learning these skills is of utmost importance to the student-engineer. Over the past three decades, universities at home and abroad have begun to incorporate computational methodologies into the curriculum in order to better prepare their students for the full scope of careers available after the completion of schooling.

By far, the introduction of theoretical models has been the most industrializing innovation to have found use in modern industries. CMS especially has the ability not only to fast-track research and development, but it creates...