Calculation of transport properties of liquid metals and their alloys via molecular dynamics

Abstract

The advanced casting modeler requires accurate viscosity and diffusivity data of liquid metals and their alloys. The present work discusses the use of equilibrium and non-equilibrium molecular dynamics techniques to obtain such data without having to rely on oversimplified phenomenological expressions or difficult and expensive experiments. Utilizing the embedded atom method (EAM), the viscosities and diffusivities for a series of equilibrium and non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations of nickel, aluminum, and nickel-aluminum alloys are presented. A critical comparison between the equilibrium and non-equilibrium methods is presented. Besides the transport properties, structural data for the liquids are also evaluated. EAM does a poor job of describing the transport properties of nickel-aluminum alloys, particularly near the equiatomic concentration. It has been suggested that charge transfer between nickel and aluminum atoms is responsible for the discrepancy between numerical calculations and available experimental data. A modified electronic distribution function has been developed to simulate the charge transfer associated with compound formation. The effects of such a "charge transfer" modification to the embedded atom method are evaluated. The results of these simulations indicate that the embedded atom method combined with molecular dynamics may be used as a method to predict reasonably the transport properties.