If you are targeting Win/OSx and Linux you'd better just using Qt4.
I can tell you from experience that it is easier than Qt3 at least if you don't have any experience until then.
Learning KDE and Qt at the very same time seems tough to me, although plugin structures could be easier to implement with KDElibs.
Sorry, this is not meant to be an anti-KDE-advertisement, but I just want to tell you that you try to do a lot and your project is still a little bit ...what I'd call underspecified :)
Do you have examples of simulations you'd like to offer?