Several physical systems in condensed matter have been modeled approximating
their constituent particles as hard objects. The hard spheres model has been
indeed one of the cornerstones of the computational and theoretical description
in condensed matter. The next level of description is to consider particles as
rigid objects of generic shape, which would enrich the possible phenomenology
enormously. This kind of modeling will prove to be interesting in all those
situations in which steric effects play a relevant role. These include biology,
soft matter, granular materials and molecular systems. With a view to
developing a general recipe for event-driven Molecular Dynamics simulations of
hard rigid bodies, two algorithms for calculating the distance between two
convex hard rigid bodies and the contact time of two colliding hard rigid
bodies solving a non-linear set of equations will be described. Building on
these two methods, an event-driven molecular dynamics algorithm for simulating
systems of convex hard rigid bodies will be developed and illustrated in
details. In order to optimize the collision detection between very elongated
hard rigid bodies, a novel nearest-neighbor list method based on an oriented
bounding box will be introduced and fully explained. Efficiency and performance
of the new algorithm proposed will be extensively tested for uniaxial hard
ellipsoids and superquadrics. Finally applications in various scientific fields
will be reported and discussed.Comment: 36 pages, 17 figure