ABSTRACT
Due to the complexity of macromolecular materials, computer simulations become increasingly important in polymer science or, better, in what is called “soft matter physics.” There are several reviews available which deal with a great variety of problems and techniques. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations with all chemical details using atomistic force fields, then Monte Carlo (MC) or MD of melts in the scaling or universal regime and finally an example of a simple coarse-grained model for polymer glasses. The conceptionally simplest and most straightforward way to study computationally the motion of individual atoms or molecules is the MD method. In addition to the MD method, a wealth of MC methods is used also at the atomistic level. They use essentially the same models, force fields, for polymers. The complexity of the molecular description makes atomistic simulations relatively costly in terms of computer time.
