Bridging the scales in nano engineering and science

This review article describes various multiscale approaches, development of which was spurred by the emergence of nanotechnology. The multiscale approaches are grouped into two main categories: information-passing and concurrent. In the concurrent multiscale methods both, the discrete and continuum scales are simultaneously resolved, whereas in the information-passing schemes, the discrete scale is modelled and its gross response is infused into the continuum scale. Most of the information-passing approaches provide sublinear computational complexity, (i.e., scales sublinearly with the cost of solving a fine scale problem), but the quantities of interest are limited to or defined only on the coarse scale. The issues of appropriate scale selection and uncertainty quantification are also reviewed.