Continuum descriptions of materials are powerful, but there are many systems for which accurately describing phenomena of engineering interest requires knowledge at an internal lengthscale of the material (e.g., the interatomic lengthscale for a fluid or a polymer or the inter-person lengthscale for a pedestrian flow). In such situations, particle-based simulations are indispensable. In this talk, we share several results obtained from particle-based simulations motivated by fields ranging from nanotechnology to environmental sustainability to crowd management. We will place particular emphasis throughout on common themes that emerge in particle-based simulations of confined materials (i.e., systems in which the lengthscales corresponding to physical boundaries are comparable to internal lengthscales of the material).
