The simulation of complex engineering problems often involves an interaction or coupling of individual phenomena, which are traditionally related by themselves to seperate fields of applied mechanics. Typical examples of these so-called multifield problems are the thermo-mechanical analysis of solids with coupling between mechanical stress analysis and thermal heat transfer processes, the simulation of coupled deformation and fluid transport mechanisms in porous media, the prediction of mass transprot and phase transition phenomena of mixtures, the analysis of sedimentation processes based on an interaction of particle dynamics and viscous flow, the simulation of multibody systems and fluid-structure interactions based on solid-to-solid and solid-to-fluid contact mechanisms.
