Example 01: Calculation of free energy#
In this example, a simple calculation of the Helmholtz free energy \(F(NVT)\) is illustrated. We use a Fe BCC structure at 100K.
The EAM potential that will be used: Meyer, R, and P Entel. “Martensite-austenite transition and phonon dispersion curves of Fe1−xNix studied by molecular-dynamics simulations.” Phys. Rev. B 57, 5140.
The reference data is from: Freitas, Rodrigo, Mark Asta, and Maurice de Koning. “Nonequilibrium Free-Energy Calculation of Solids Using LAMMPS.” Computational Materials Science 112 (February 2016): 333–41.
Solid free energy#
The input file for calculation of solid BCC Fe at 100 K is provided in the folder. A detailed description of the input file is available here. The calculation can be started from the terminal using:
calphy -i input.yaml
This should give a message:
Total number of 1 calculations found
calphy
is running in the background executing the calculation. A new folder called fe-bcc-solid-100-0
, and files called fe-bcc-100-solid-0.sub.err
and fe-bcc-solid-100-0.sub.out
will also be created.
After the calculation is over, the results are available in the report.yaml
file. The file is shown below:
average:
density: 0.08337660890608233
spring_constant: '3.28'
vol_atom: 11.99414235031551
input:
concentration: '1.0'
element: Fe
lattice: BCC
pressure: 0.0
temperature: 100
results:
error: 0.0
free_energy: -4.263489224907735
pv: 0.0
reference_system: 0.014873819531664851
unit: eV/atom
work: -4.278363044439399
The calculated free energy is \(-4.2635\) eV/atom, the value reported in the publication is \(-4.2631147(1)\) eV/atom. The calculated value can be further improved by increasing the system size, and by increasing the switching time.