Instituts für Kontinuumsmechanik (Leibniz Universität Hannover)

The Institute of Continuum Mechanics (LUH-IKM) is one of the oldest at the Leibniz Universität Hannover, being founded in 1840. It has  transformed over the years from a theoretical related unit to an internationally known center of Computational Mechanics Its research spectrum covers areas like coupled problems and multi-physics applications, material design, contact analysis and fracture that also include approaches for continuum/molecular and atomistic coupling and continuum/discontinuum coupling. Computational Mechanics has gained through its far reaching application spectrum an enormous interest and still has potential to grow in the near future.  The Institute for Mechanics and Computational Mechanics, Leibniz Universität Hannover is extensively engaged in both fundamental and applied research in a range of areas relevant to the above proposal.

These include: computational modelling of materials incorporating both traditional and multi-scale concepts, contact-friction modelling, discrete element methodology, description and simulation of fracturing processes and development of computational strategies for coupled problems for various multi-physics applications. Key topics of the research at IKM are: Development of innovative finite element methods for contact problems. New mixed finite elements. New models and simulation techniques for biomechanics. Development of discrete elements techniques. Development of new multiscale methods for coupled particle and finite element analysis.  Fluid-particle interaction problems for processes in chemical engineering are Development of decision support systems in engineering...

The IKM has at the moment 25 PhD students and 2 Postdocs working on the above topics in modeling and simulation. Several projects are related to large simulation models and parallel computations. In the last 10 years, IKM has taken part in over 35 RTD projects with several companies and organizations. About 5 of these projects have received EC support through FP3-7 programmes. The other projects are directly from industry and from the German Science Foundation.

Numexas Key personnel

Professor Dr.-Ing. habil. P. Wriggers studied Civil Engineering from 1970-1976 at the University of Hannover, he obtained his Dr.-Ing degree at the University of Hannover in 1980 on “Contact-impact problems”. In 1990 he was appointed as Full Professor at the Institute of Mechanics at TH Darmstadt. Since 2008 he is director of the Institute of Continuum Mechanics in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Leibniz Universität Hannover. He was awarded the Fellowship of IACM and received the “Computational Mechanics Award” of IACM, the “Euler Medal” of ECCOMAS and the “IACM Award” of IACM. Among his research interests are development of new techniques and algorithms in computational mechanics, contact mechanics, multi-scale modelling of heterogeneous materials and contact problems and development of finite element technology. In this area he has written 10 books and around 200 scientific papers in peer-reviewed international journals.

Dr.-Ing. S. Loehnert studied mechanical engineering and mechanics at the Technical University Darmstadt from 1996 – 1999. After that he pursued his PhD  on  Computational Homogenization of Microheterogeneous Materials at Finite Strains Including Damage at Leibniz Universität Hannover. From 2005 – 2007    he was post-doctoral fellow at the department of mechanical engineering at the Northwestern University. Since 2007 he is Senior engineer at the Institute of Continuum Mechanics at the Leibniz Universität Hannover. His research interests are related to Finite Element Methods, Extended Finite Element Methods, Multiscale Methods, Computational Homogenization and Computational Fracture Mechanics.

Specific contribution to NUMEXAS

LUH-IKM will participate in the implementation, development and design of new codes to be applied in exascale architectures over the whole simulation pipeline. Besides, they will coordinate WP5 and 10. They will also provide their code DEMFLOW to be used as starting point for the new codes to be developed in the project.