Thermal conductivity of molecular fluids from molecular dynamics simulations: application of a new imposed-flux method

Journal ArticleWe have applied a new nonequilibrium molecular dynamics (NEMD) method [F. Müller-Plathe, J. Chem. Phys. 106, 6082 (1997)] previously applied to monatomic Lennard-Jones fluids in the determination of the thermal conductivity of molecular fluids. The method was modified in order to be applicable to systems with holonomic constraints

Exploration of conformational phase space in polymer melts: a comparison of parallel tempering and conventional molecular dynamics simulations

Journal ArticleParallel tempering molecular dynamics simulations have been performed for 1,4-polybutadiene polymer melts in the 323 K-473 K temperature domain at atmospheric pressure. The parallel tempering approach provides a vast improvement in the equilibration and sampling of conformational phase space for the atomistic melt chains in comparison with conventional molecular dynamics simulations even for molecular weights and temperatures considered to be routinely accessible via the latter technique

Integral equation theory for polymer solutions: explicit inclusion of the solvent molecules

Journal ArticleSelf-consistent Polymer Reference Interaction Site Model (PRISM) calculations and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations were performed on athermal solutions of linear polymers. Unlike most previous treatments of polymer solutions, we explicitly included the solvent molecules. The polymers were modeled as tangent site chains and the solvent molecules were taken to be spherical sites having the same intermolecular potential as the polymer sites

Molecular dynamics simulation study of the pressure-volume-temperature behavior of polymers under high pressure

Journal ArticleIsothermal compression of poly (dimethylsiloxane), 1,4-poly(butadiene), and a model Estane® (in both pure form and a nitroplasticized composition similar to PBX-9501 binder) at pressures up to 100 kbars has been studied using atomistic molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Comparison of predicted compression, bulk modulus, and Us−up behavior with experimental static and dynamic compression data available in the literature reveals good agreement between experiment and simulation, indicating that MD simulations utilizing simple quantum-chemistry-based potentials can be used to accurately predict the behavior of polymers at relatively high pressure. Despite their very different zero-pressure bulk moduli, the compression, modulus, and Us−up behavior (including low-pressure curvature) for the three polymers could be reasonably described by the Tait equation of state (EOS) utilizing the universal C parameter. The Tait EOS was found to provide an excellent description of simulation PVT data when the C parameter was optimized for each polymer. The Tait EOS parameters, namely, the zero-pressure bulk modulus and the C parameter, were found to correlate well with free volume for these polymers as measured in simulations by a simple probe insertion algorithm. Of the polymers studied, PDMS was found to have the most free volume at low pressure, consistent with its lower ambient pressure bulk modulus and greater increase in modulus with increasing pressure (i.e., crush-up behavior)

Anomalous pressure dependence of the structure factor in 1,4-polybutadiene melts: a molecular dynamics simulation study

Journal ArticleNeutron scattering has shown the first diffraction peak in the structure factor of a 1,4-polybutadiene melt under compression to move to larger q values as expected but to decrease significantly in intensity. Simulations reveal that this behavior does not result from loss of structure in the polymer melt upon compression but rather from the generic effects of differences in the pressure dependence of the intermolecular and intramolecular contributions to the melt structure factor and differences in the pressure dependence of the partial structure factors for carbon-carbon and carbon-deuterium intermolecular correlations. This anomalous pressure dependence is not seen for protonated melts

Molecular dynamics simulation study of elastic properties of HMX

Journal ArticleAtomistic simulations were used to calculate the isothermal elastic properties for b-, a-, and d-octahydro-1,3,5,7-tetranitro-1,3,5,7-tetrazocine (HMX). The room-temperature isotherm for each polymorph was computed in the pressure interval 0≤p≤10.6 GPa and was used to extract the initial isothermal bulk modulus Ko and its pressure derivative using equations of state employed previously in experimental studies of the b-HMX isotherm

Thermodynamic, transport and viscoelastic properties of PBX-9501 binder: a molecular dynamics simulation study

ManuscriptAtomistic molecular dynamics simulations were performed on a low molecular weight nitroplasticized Estane® mixture representative of the binder used in PBX-9501. Pressurevolume-temperature (PVT) behavior over a wide range of pressure and temperatures above the order-disorder temperature (ODT) of Estane was determined and represented with the empirical Tait and Sun equations-of-state. The effect of temperature, pressure and plasticization on transport properties of the mixture was also examined. A combination of molecular dynamics simulations and theoretical reptation models was used to predict the shear stress relaxation modulus G(t) of PBX-9501 binder at 473 K and 1 atm pressure. Data obtained from simulations of the model PBX-9501 binder presented here can be utilized to predict the temperature and pressure dependence of the shear stress relaxation modulus for temperatures above the ODT

Equilibrium sampling of self-associating polymer solutions: a parallel selective tempering approach

Journal ArticleWe present a novel simulation algorithm based on tempering a fraction of relaxation-limiting interactions to accelerate the process of obtaining uncorrelated equilibrium configurations of self-associating polymer solutions. This approach consists of tempering (turning off) the attractive interactions for a fraction of self-associating groups determined by a biasing field h. A number of independent configurations _x0001_replicas_x0002_ with overlapping Hamiltonian distributions in the expanded (NVTh) ensemble with constant NVT but different biasing fields, forming a chain of Hamiltonians, were simulated in parallel with occasional attempts to exchange the replicas associated with adjacent fields. Each field had an associated distribution of tempered interactions, average fraction of tempered interactions, and structural decorrelation time. Tempering parameters (number of replicas, fields, and exchange frequencies) were chosen to obtain the highest efficiency in sampling equilibrium configurations of a self-association polymer solution based on short serial simulation runs and a statistical model. Depending on the strength of the relaxation-limiting interactions, system size, and thermodynamic conditions, the algorithm can be orders of magnitude more efficient than conventional canonical simulation and is superior to conventional temperature parallel tempering

Temperature dependent shear viscosity coefficient of octahydro-1,3,5,7-tetranitro-1,3,5,7-tetrazocine (HMX ): a molecular dynamics simulation study

Journal ArticleEquilibrium molecular dynamics methods were used in conjunction with linear response theory and a recently published potential-energy surface [J. Phys. Chem. B 103, 3570 (1999)] to compute the liquid shear viscosity and self-diffusion coefficient of the high explosive HMX (octahydro-1,3,5,7-tetranitro-1,3,5,7-tetrazocine) over the temperature domain 550-800 K. Predicted values of the shear viscosity range from 0.0055 Pa *s at the highest temperature studied up to 0.45 Pa *s for temperatures near the melting point

Comparison of self-assembly in lattice and off-lattice model amphiphile solutions

Journal ArticleLattice Monte Carlo and off-lattice molecular dynamics simulations of h1t4 and h4t1 (head/tail) amphiphile solutions have been performed as a function of surfactant concentration and temperature. The lattice and off-lattice systems exhibit quite different self-assembly behavior at equivalent thermodynamic conditions. We found that in the weakly aggregating regime (no preferred-size micelles), all models yield similar micelle size distributions at the same average aggregation number, albeit at different thermodynamic conditions (temperatures)