An atomistic-to-continuum coupling method for heat transfer in solids

In this work, we present a seamless, energy-conserving method to couple atomistic and continuum representations of a temperature field in a material. This technique allows a molecular dynamics simulation to be used in localized regions of the computational domain, surrounded and overlaid by a continuum finite element representation. Thermal energy can pass between the two regions in either direction, making larger simulations of nano-scale thermal processes possible. We discuss theoretical developments and numerical implementation details. In addition, we present and analyze a set of representative simulations.