Foreword--颗粒学报PARTICUOLOGY

a State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Complex Systems, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
b Laboratory for Simulation and Modeling of Particulate Systems, School of Materials Science and Engineering, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia

10.1016/j.partic.2011.06.001

Volume 9, Issue 4, August 2011, Page 319

Available online 22 July 2011.

E-mail: wge@home.ipe.ac.cn

Highlights

Abstract

Granular materials are ubiquitous in nature and engineering. They display both fluid- and solid-like behavior with fascinating complexity and remarkable uniqueness. Their behavior at different scales is strongly coupled with each other because of high non-equilibrium constraints and finite size effects. Understanding and simulating their multi-scale structures and behavior have been a common challenge for researchers working in different fields or industries, including, for example, from the production of delicate materials (e.g., foods, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and functional nanomaterials) to the processing of granular products (e.g., chemicals, minerals and agricultural produce).

In response to this common challenge, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Indian National Science Academy (INSA) and Royal Academy of Engineering of UK (RAE), together with Unilever, organized the first International Conference on Multi-scale Structures and Systems in Beijing, China (2007). The conference theme was “Designing Structured Materials for Functionality”. Success of the event led to the organization of the second conference in Bangalore, India (2008) with the theme “Processes and Forces for Creation of Designer Materials with Multi-scale Structures”, and the third one in Beijing, China (2010) with the theme “Modeling, Simulation and Virtual Experiments”.

About 150 researchers from over 10 countries attended this third conference and 27 invited presentations were given, details of which can be found from the website: http://www.multiscalesci.org. This special issue, titled Multiscale modeling and simulation of complex particulate systems, contains some papers submitted as presentations at the conference and several papers recently submitted to Particuology which befit the theme. It aims to provide a state-of-the-art gallery of multi-scale studies on granular materials. These papers discuss not only the simulation and analysis approaches but also the fundamental building blocks for these approaches such as the interaction models between particles or between particles and fluid, as well as the algorithms to efficiently carry out the simulations. A few papers discuss how multiscale modeling and simulation are used through case studies.

With the publishing of this special issue, we would like to thank those who have made it possible, especially the organizers and participants of the 3rd International Conference on Multi-scale Structures and Systems, the contributing authors and anonymous referees. This special issue also represents a joint research effort sponsored by the Australia-China Special Fund for Science and Technology Cooperation (No. 2007DFA41320).

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