Parameters in DPD (Dissipative P
by Yawei Liu @Sydney, Australia 2020/01/16
DPD model
In the DPD model, one DPD bead represents fluid (e.g. water) molecules. Here,
is also called coarse-graining (CG) degree. The DPD beads interact with each other via a conservative force
, a dissipative force
and a random force
given by
between bead and
.
-
: the centre-to-centre distance between the two beads.
-
: the direction vector pointing between the two beads.
-
: the vector difference in velocities between the two beads.
-
: the repulsion coefficient.
-
: the dissipative coefficient.
-
: the the noise strength, and
with
the Boltzmann constant and
the temperature.
-
: a Gaussian white noise variable.
-
: the simulation time step.
-
: the cutoff distance, and also can be treated as the size (diameter) of the DPD bead.
Determine paramters
-
,
,
(bead mass) and
(time)
In simulations, the reduced units are often used. For DPD model, all units are often scaled by the length unit, the mass unit
, the energy unit
, and the time unit
. Hence,
in the simulations. The superscript asterisk (
) means the quality is in reduced units. Units of other quantities are from these four basic units. For example, the unit for the mass density is
, the unit for the diffusion constant is
.
-
(density)
The DPD simulations are normally carried out within aensemble, and the number of particles are often determined by setting
. When
, a simple scaling relation between the density and excess pressure exits
. In principle the density chosen for the simulation is a free parameter, but for efficiency reasons one would thus choose the lowest possible density where the scaling relation still holds.
-
and
In order to match the compressibility of DPD fluid with a liquid having the dimensionless compressibility of, the interparticle repulsion coefficient
is given by
For water,yields
for
and
for
.
-
and
As a reasonable compromise between fast temperature equilibration, a fast simulation and a stable, physically meaningful system, simulation withand
is often recommended.
However, above choice forand
yields very small Schmidt number (i.e. the ratio of viscosity to diffusion) (
) compared to the real fluid such as water (
). A possible solution to this problem is increasing
. At the same time though,
would have to be reduced to maintain the temperature control.
-
There is no unique way to determine the parameters for DPD model. For a given physical problem, with a characteristic length scale, we may always put a given number of DPD particles and parametrize the model in order to recover some macroscopic information (e.g. compressibilities, viscosity and diffusion constant).
Units conversation
The conversation between DPD units (,
,
and
) and real units ([m], [J], [kg] and [s]) is obtained from the key macroscopic information recovered by the model. If quantities in DPD units are labeled with
and in real units are labeled with
, one would have
-
with
the mole mass of the fluid (e.g. water) and
the Avogadro constant.
-
with
the mass density of the fluid.
-
with
and
is the system temperature in
.
- The time unit
can be chosen in different ways.
- By taking the long-term self-diffusion constant into account,
with
the diffusion constant. Sometimes, this relation is also used to determine
.
- If the viscous processes are the main parts, then
with
the kinematic viscosity.
- Or
in which the reference velocity
is chosen as either system thermal velocity
or the characteristic velocity of the real flow.
- By taking the long-term self-diffusion constant into account,
Example
A NVT simulation with 1000 DPD beads in a cubic box is carried out by LAMMPS. The parameters are: ;
for
;
;
. Then, by comparing the DPD fluid with the water at
, we have:
- Mass
[kg] (
)
- Length
[m] (
)
- Energy
[J] (
)
- Time
[s] (
)
As a results, the kinematic viscosity for the DPD fluid is[m
/s] (
[m
/s] for water).