Cellular Automata in Complex Matter
Résumé
Complex matter may take various forms from granular matter, soft matter, fluid-fluid, or solid-fluid mixtures to compact heterogeneous material. Cellular automata models make a suitable and powerful tool for catching the influence of the microscopic scale in the macroscopic behaviorof these complex systems. Rather than a survey, this paper attemptsto bring out the main concepts underlying these models. A taxonomy is presented with four general types proposed: sandpile, lattice-gas, latticegrain, and hybrid models. A discussion follows with general questions; namely, grain-size, synchronization, topology and scalability, and consistency of the models.