Welcome to the Computational Solid Mechanics Laboratory at Louisiana State University

The Computational Solid Mechanics (CSM) Lab promotes research in materials science at LSU and in conjunction with other research facilities and teams around the world. By specializing in numerical analysis and experimentation at the nanoscale, CSM pioneers the advancement of knowledge in this emerging area of science.

Engineers, scientists, and technicians design new products for many reasons: to increase productivity and efficiency in the industrial process, to reduce the cost of manufacturing, to replace existing products that are aging, and to add new features that will benefit people's lives. Throughout the design process, selection and preparation of proper materials is crucial to achieving the desired result. As researchers understand more of how and why materials behave under real-world conditions, they can use that knowledge to create materials that are stronger, lighter, tougher, safer, etc. than those that are commercially available today.

Building on the discoveries of past research efforts, this laboratory uses information from experiments with materials in conjunction with a powerful supercomputer to properly characterize material behaviors such as:

We work to relate these natural phenomena to conditions such as: