Molecular and mesoscale simulation methods for polymer materials

Polymers offer a wide spectrum of possibilities for materials applications, in part because of the chemical complexity and variability of the constituent molecules, and in part because they can be blended together with other organic as well as inorganic components. The majority of applications of polymeric materials is based on their excellent mechanical properties, which arise from the long-chain nature of the constituents. Microscopically, this means that polymeric materials are able to respond to external forces in a broad frequency range, i.e., with a broad range of relaxation processes. Computer simulation methods are ideally suited to help to understand these processes and the structural properties that lead to them and to further our ability to predict materials properties and behavior. However, the broad range of timescales and underlying structure prohibits any one single simulation method from capturing all of these processes. This manuscript provides an overview of some of the more popular computational models and methods used today in the field of molecular and mesoscale simulation of polymeric materials, ranging from molecular models and methods that treat electronic degrees of freedom to mesoscopic field theoretic methods.