Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
797753 Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids 2016 21 Pages PDF
Abstract

The non-uniqueness of the atomistic stress tensor is a well-known issue when defining continuum fields for atomistic systems. In this paper, we study the non-uniqueness of the atomistic stress tensor stemming from the non-uniqueness of the potential energy representation. In particular, we show using rigidity theory that the distribution associated with the potential part of the atomistic stress tensor can be decomposed into an irrotational part that is independent of the potential energy representation, and a traction-free solenoidal part. Therefore, we have identified for the atomistic stress tensor a discrete analog of the continuum generalized Beltrami representation (a version of the vector Helmholtz decomposition for symmetric tensors). We demonstrate the validity of these analogies using a numerical test. A program for performing the decomposition of the atomistic stress tensor called MDStressLab is available online at http://mdstresslab.org.

Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering Engineering Mechanical Engineering
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