Optimal Energy Dissipation in Sliding Friction Simulations
Abstract
Non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations, of crucial importance in sliding friction, are hampered by arbitrariness and uncertainties in the removal of the frictionally generated Joule heat. Building upon general pre-existing formulation, we implement a fully microscopic dissipation approach which, based on a parameter-free, non-Markovian, stochastic dynamics, absorbs Joule heat equivalently to a semi-infinite solid and harmonic substrate. As a test case, we investigate the stick-slip friction of a slider over a two-dimensional Lennard-Jones solid, comparing our virtually exact frictional results with approximate ones from commonly adopted dissipation schemes. Remarkably, the exact results can be closely reproduced by a standard Langevin dissipation scheme, once its parameters are determined according to a general and self-standing variational procedure.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1208.5565,
title = {Optimal Energy Dissipation in Sliding Friction Simulations},
author = {A. Benassi and A. Vanossi and G. E. Santoro and E. Tosatti},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1208.5565},
year = {2012}
}