No Permanent Deformation

Hi everyone.

I am trying to simulate an indentation of a substrate by a spherical rigid indenter. Anytime I run this simulation, the indenter simply passes through the substrate without permanent deformation of the substrate. Also, I noticed that the velocity command doesn’t work with rigid bodies. My script is as follows:

units metal

dimension 3

boundary p p p

atom_style atomic

variable latparam equal 5.43

######## SIMULATION BOX

region simulationbox block 0 500 0 500 0 400 units box
create_box 2 simulationbox

mass 1 12.01

mass 2 28.0855

######## SUBSTRATE

lattice fcc ${latparam}

region Si block 0 500 0 500 0 350 units box

create_atoms 2 region Si units box

group substrate region Si

######## ZONING OF SUBSTRATE

region mobile block 0 500 0 500 10.86 350 units box

group upper region mobile

region thermobile block 0 500 0 500 5.43 350 units box

group middle region thermobile

group thermo subtract middle upper

group fixed subtract substrate middle

neighbor 2.0 bin

neigh_modify delay 0 every 1 check yes

######## INDENTER

lattice fcc 3.57

region diamond sphere 100 100 360 8 units box

create_atoms 1 region diamond units box

group indenter region diamond

fix 12 indenter rigid single

######## INTERATOMIC POTENTIAL

pair_style hybrid morse 9 tersoff tersoff

pair_coeff * * tersoff 1 SiC.tersoff C NULL

pair_coeff * * tersoff 2 Si.tersoff NULL Si

pair_coeff 1 2 morse 0.435 4.6875 1.9475 1.5

######## INITIALIZE TEMPERATURE

velocity middle create 200 4186532 dist uniform mom yes rot yes

velocity thermo create 200 4186532 dist uniform mom yes rot yes

fix 2 fixed setforce 0.0 0.0 0.0

fix 19 middle temp/rescale 1 200 200 0.5 1.0

fix 70 substrate nve

dump equitempsrecent all xyz 100 dump.equitempsrecent

run_style verlet

thermo_style custom step temp ke pe

thermo 200

reset_timestep 0

run 1000

####### VERTICAL INDENTATIION

fix 100 indenter addforce 0.0 0.0 -0.05

dump vertical200 all xyz 100 dump.vertical200

run_style verlet

reset_timestep 0

run 2500

unfix 100

unfix 70

Any assistance will be most appreciated.

Thanks

Chionye Okwuashi
MS student,
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Parks College of Engineering, Aviation, and Technology,
Saint Louis University.

Hi everyone.

I am trying to simulate an indentation of a substrate by a spherical rigid indenter. Anytime I run this simulation, the indenter simply passes through the substrate without permanent deformation of the substrate. Also, I noticed that the velocity command doesn’t work with rigid bodies.

are you sure about having a cutoff of 1.5 angstrom for your morse potential?

the velocity command does work. but you are probably expecting something that either makes no sense or is in conflict with what the documentation says about it.

axel.