Methods, systems, and computer program products for computational polymer
processing including, without limitation, computational amphiphilic
polymer design, conformational energy minimization, generation and
refinement of torsional parameters for sub-units of potential polymers,
generation of modified force field parameters, and prediction of
conformational information for potential polymers. A target polymer
backbone or portion thereof is identified. Small model compounds that
have structural connectivities that are similar to structural
connectivities of the target polymer backbone or portion thereof, are
identified, whereby the combination of the small model compounds serve as
a model of the target polymer or portion thereof. Gradient-corrected
density functional theory ("DFT") torsional potentials are calculated for
the small model compounds, wherein energies are calculated at
unconstrained and constrained geometries of the selected small model
compounds. New torsional parameters are then obtained from the DFT
torsional potentials. The new torsional parameters are combined with
other terms to form a modified (or new) force field for the target
polymer backbone or portion thereof. Molecular dynamics and
configurational-biased Monte Carlo ("MD/MC") simulations are performed
using the modified force field, whereby results of the MD/MC simulations
serve as predicted conformation properties of the target polymer
backbone. The predicted conformation properties for the multiple target
polymer backbones are then used to select one or more of the target
polymer backbones as candidate amphiphilic polymer backbones for
synthesis.