Engineering Molecular Mechanics (EMM) was developed as an alternative to conventional molecular simulation techniques to model high temperature (T > 0 K) phenomena. The EMM methodology was developed using thermal expansion and thermal energy as key thermal properties. Temperature dependent interatomic potentials were developed to account for thermal effects. Lennard-Jones and Morse potentials were used to build temperature dependent potentials. The validity and effectiveness of EMM simulations were demonstrated by simulating temperature dependent properties such as thermal expansion, elastic constants and thermal stress in copper and nickel. EMM simulations were significantly faster than molecular dynamics (MD) simulations for the same accuracy. A controversy regarding the definition of stress in an atomic system was resolved. Using theoretical arguments and numerical examples, the equivalence of virial stress and Cauchy stress was proved. It was shown that neglecting the velocity term in the definition of virial stress (as suggested by some researchers) can cause significant errors in MD simulations at high temperatures. The nanoscale instabilities during phase transformation in Ni-Al shape memory alloys were studied using MD and EMM simulations. The phase transformation temperatures predicted by MD simulations agreed well with experiments. Some limitations of the EMM methodology and the minimization algorithm were discussed. The possibility of nanoscale material design of Ni-Al shape memory alloys was investigated. It was found that the distribution of nickel and aluminum atoms in the alloy can affect the phase transformation characteristics significantly. A new design criterion based on thermal expansion mismatch was introduced. The predicted results using the new criterion matched well with the phase transformation temperature and strain calculated using MD simulations. The new one parameter design criterion was shown to be effective for designing Ni-Al shape memory alloys.