It certainly is, you just need to focus on a property that changes between the 
phases and that is obtainable from the MDSs.  For a transition from liquid to 
solid, things like RDF, SDF, dihedral fractions and diffusion coefficients 
might provide some insight.

You have the trajectories, why don't you just try as many of the properties you 
can get out of it and see if you see a change?

Visual inspect is also a powerful technique, but you will need to back that up 
with some actual values.  The averaging function in VMD can be quite handy for 
this, showing the "average structure" of a molecule over a particular time 
frame.

Something you need to consider, is the time frame involved for a polymer to 
change between a liquid and "solid" state and the simulation time you have 
used.  With having no idea on what polymer you have, size etc, I would hazard 
to say you would need easily something in the order of 200+ns to start to see 
some ordering occurring, if not something an order of magnitude longer.  
Polymers are big molecules and it will take long time for things to rearrange.

And finally, the forcefield wont necessarily show the correct behaviour, unless 
it was derived to do that.  It could simply be a poor model to use for showing 
phase behaviour.

Catch ya,

Dr. Dallas Warren
Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Action
Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University
381 Royal Parade, Parkville VIC 3010
[email protected]
+61 3 9903 9304
---------------------------------
When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail.

From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On 
Behalf Of Elisabeth
Sent: Wednesday, 14 September 2011 11:33 AM
To: Discussion list for GROMACS users
Subject: [gmx-users] phase transition in MD simulation

Dear experts,

I am working on a pure polymer melt system under NPT and at a given T, pressure 
is increased up to around 1000 bar. However, the phase diagram of the polymer 
is indicating that at this T, as pressure is increased to above 500 bar, system 
falls below the melting point.

I mean I am doing NPT on a liquid polymer by packing the chains in to the box 
but even applying a pressure of 1000 bar does not make the atoms or chains 
resemble a solid phase. The system would only become a more packed liquid 
phase. In other words, MD is representing an extrapolated liquid phase in the 
subcooled region.

My question is whether there is any way to identify phase transition from MD 
simulation.

Please comment and let me know what you think.

Thanking you,

-- 
gmx-users mailing list    [email protected]
http://lists.gromacs.org/mailman/listinfo/gmx-users
Please search the archive at 
http://www.gromacs.org/Support/Mailing_Lists/Search before posting!
Please don't post (un)subscribe requests to the list. Use the 
www interface or send it to [email protected].
Can't post? Read http://www.gromacs.org/Support/Mailing_Lists

Reply via email to