[lammps-users] Kspace Style - ewald -selection of precision value

Hi everyone

I am currently performing a npt simulation on a minimized structure of tobermorite . My simulation cell consist of 3888 atoms and I am using three pair styles: buck, sw and coul/long. I am not sure how to use the ewald summation command (kspace style) in Lammps. I am not clear on the selction of a “precision value”. In lammps, it says that This value is used in conjunction with the pairwise cutoff to determine the number of K-space vectors for style ewald. I used a precision value of 0.0001, works well for energy minimization, however when I applied NPT conditions (300k, 0bars), the system aborts at 100 fs. I also tried using a precision value of 10 and got a really large pressure after energy minimization, however I can perform NPT without system aborting. I am not sure why this is happening. Can someone assist me with this problem.

Sample Output file

boundary p p p

atom_style charge

pair_style hybrid/overlay buck 3.0 sw coul/long 3.0

kspace_style ewald 10.0

read_data data7.hamid

orthogonal box = (0 0 0) to (34.48 22.17 68.33)

2 by 1 by 4 processor grid

3888 atoms

pair_coeff 1 1 buck 4369.01 0.29 0.0

pair_coeff 1 8 buck 4369.01 0.29 0.0

pair_coeff 2 2 buck 1171.52 0.29 0.0

pair_coeff 6 7 buck 248.6324 0.29 0.0

pair_coeff 3 7 buck 248.6324 0.29 0.0

pair_coeff * * coul/long

pair_coeff * * sw SiOOO.sw NULL Si O NULL NULL NULL NULL NULL

neighbor 2.0 bin

neigh_modify delay 5

equilibrate

min_style cg

thermo 5

minimize 1.0e-4 1.0e-6 120 1000

Ewald initialization …

G vector = 0.334871

vectors: actual 1d max = 0 -2147483648 -2147483648

Memory usage per processor = 3.51844e+13 Mbytes

Step Temp E_pair E_mol TotEng Press

0 0 -126519.67 0 -126519.67 -247601

4 0 -128950.76 0 -128950.76 -349464.88

Minimization stats:

Stopping criterion = energy tolerance

Energy initial, next-to-last, final =

-126519.672709 -128947.109705 -128950.761085

Force two-norm initial, final = 463.721 283.049

Force max component initial, final = 18.2084 8.58276

Final line search alpha, max atom move = 4.52249e-05 0.000388154

Iterations, force evaluations = 4 21

Pair time (%) = 0.0220845 (79.4304)

Kspce time (%) = 0.000148773 (0.535087)

Neigh time (%) = 0 (0)

Comm time (%) = 0.00470981 (16.9396)

Outpt time (%) = 0 (0)

Other time (%) = 0.000860482 (3.09487)

Nlocal: 486 ave 510 max 462 min

Histogram: 2 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 2

Nghost: 1376.38 ave 1451 max 1298 min

Histogram: 2 0 0 0 2 1 1 0 0 2

Neighs: 10329.8 ave 10662 max 9969 min

Histogram: 2 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4

FullNghs: 20659.5 ave 21597 max 19707 min

Histogram: 2 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 3

Total # of neighbors = 165276

Ave neighs/atom = 42.5093

Neighbor list builds = 0

Dangerous builds = 0

300-NPT

velocity all create 300.0 5812775

fix 1 all npt 300.0 300.0 0.001 xyz 0.0 0.0 1.0 drag 1.0

fix 1 all npt 300 300 0.001 aniso 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.04 drag 1.0

thermo 200

thermo_style custom step temp etotal press

thermo_modify flush yes

timestep 0.0001

run 5000000

Ewald initialization …

G vector = 0.334871

vectors: actual 1d max = 0 -2147483648 -2147483648

Memory usage per processor = 3.51844e+13 Mbytes

A precision of 0.0001 is fine. A value of 10 is way too
inaccurate. The real problem you are having is a large pressure
which in NPT is causing the box to grow or shrink (you should
be monitoring the box size), which is probably also causing
your system to croak since it is doing something unphysical.
So you need to figure out why your pressure is so large and
whether you should be doing NPT or not.

Steve