Preface by the editors
Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) is of vital imp ortance to to-
day’s and tomorrow’s society. It enables the simulation of processes, phenom-
ena and systems that can not be studied by real exper iments because these
are too dangerous, too expensive, unethical, or just technically impossible.
Moreover, as oppose d to experiments, CSE allows for automatic design and
optimization. Every major discipline in science and eng ineer ing has its own
computational br anch now. E ngineers, medical doctors, policy makers, et
cetera rely more and more on CSE for decision support. With the longstand-
ing, c ontinuing growth in speed, memory and cost-effectiveness of computers,
and with similar improvements in numerical algorithms, the ex isting and fu-
ture benefits of CSE are enormous. CSE is and will be a crucial enabling
technolo gy.
Although CSE has spread over many different disciplines, it is to be regarded
as a discipline in its own right, because of the specialized skills involved,
the long learning curve required, a nd the rapid pace of innovation, which is
impossible to keep track of by non-expe rts and casual users. The challenge
of CSE is the development and e xploitation o f ever more realistic computa-
tional models . Perfect realism by dire c t (brute-force) simulation is imposs ible
in most instances, and will remain to be so for a long time, if not forever.
With increasing realism, in general, multi-scalednes s and multi-disciplinarity
also increase, two fundamental inhibitor s for direct simulation. Significant
disparity in scales motivates multi-sca le modeling instead. Although multi-
scale modeling has always been part and par c e l of science (think of replacing
a body by a p oint mass, or of the continuum approximation in fluid dynam-
ics), CSE has led to a renewed interest in it, and has opened new perspec-
tives and challenges. Concerning multi-disciplinarity, this motivates more and
more the intelligent coupling of distinct, existing models: fluid-dynamics plus
structural-mechanics models, thermal plus electrical models, et cetera.
Although CSE depends heavily on computer ar chitectures, numerical math-
ematics is at its heart. A challenge is to ensure that numerical methods
remain capable of optimally profiting from the growing speed and memory of
tomorrow’s computer architectures. With the incre asing realism and hence
complexity in CSE, numerical robustness and numerical efficiency are prop e r-
ties of growing importance . Baby-sitting a complex CSE simulation because
of the use of non-r obust numerical techniques in it, is unwanted. And so is
quick filling of fast and large computers by the use of inefficient numerical
methods . Numerical robustness is to be obtained by developing and apply-
ing numerical methods that are stable and well-conditioned for the specific
problems a t hand. Numerical efficiency has to be striven for by extracting the
maximum amount of correct information from the minimum amount of grid