The ''Micromechanics of Materials Group'' has been established by Jun.-Prof. Christian Linder Ph.D. in September 2008 within the Cluster of Excellence (SimTech). The group is part of the Insitute of Applied Mechanics (CE), Chair I headed by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christian Miehe.

The research activities of our group are driven by the desire to contribute to the development of new sustainable materials with possible applications in all areas of engineering like nanotechnology, materials under extreme conditions, multifunctional materials or biomaterials, to mention just a few. To avoid possible catastrophic events a particular emphasis in the work is geared towards the understanding of failure mechanisms in such new materials. Our contribution to that goal focuses on the development of computational techniques to numerically simulate physical based processes in materials. Such processes may either be triggered by the particular microstructure of the material or by environmental driven processes like aging, extreme loading conditions, or scenarios eventually leading to the failing of the material. Materials with dominant microstructure like polymers, multifunctional materials, carbon-nanostructures like graphene or biological materials require physical based models to account for such effects appearing on different length scales.

We have developed finite element based methods to approximate density functional theories for electronic structure calculations as well as advanced finite element concepts to model strong discontinuities on a macroscopic level. On a constitutive level, we have developed statistical approaches on large polymeric networks and on physical phenomena like strain-induced crystallization arising in those. Those acquired skills serve as foundation for our future research which is driven by the desire to understand the structure and organization of our natural environment with a subsequent incorporation of the gained knowledge into the developement of engineering based sustainable materials.