Introduction
Have you ever wondered how engineers are able to negotiate complex concepts and wrangle nature to produce modern marvels? Have you been curious about how realistic modern game graphics and mechanics look and feel? Have you been in awe about how climate scientists are able to reason about and forecast complex phenomena, and how meteorologists are able to produce accurate forecasts?
We argue simulation is one of the major tools that has made all these possible, and more! You must have heard of how Moore’s law has made computers exponentially more powerful every year. In the last decade, engineers and scientists have been able to build on this and utilize even more computing power as cloud services have freed them from needing to buy and maintain computers in-house. In parallel, there have been advances in simulation techniques to be able to simulate things that were previously not possible, such as soft materials and the shape of biological proteins. The result of all these advances is that simulation is indispensable for developing complex engineered systems and tackling large-scale scientific problems.
In this series, we explain simulation in simple terms and catalog different applications and methods that make the modern world possible. We use open-source tools to guide the reader in explaining and recreating simulations used in the real world.
About the editor
Prakash Manandhar, PhD. has worked in industry and academia in various multidisciplinary projects and endeavors. As part of his graduate studies and industry projects, he has focused on a wide range of multidisciplinary simulation methods and applications relating to biomedical engineering, robotics, software, acoustics, and the science of teamwork.
Disclaimer
The views and content expressed in this series are of the authors, and editors and not their employers. All open-source material and references to published content have been cited.
