md.constrain

Overview

Constraint

Constraint force base class.

Distance

Constrain pairwise particle distances.

Rigid

Constrain particles in rigid bodies.

Details

Constraints.

Constraint force classes apply forces and the resulting virial to particles that enforce specific constraints on the positions of the particles. The constraint is satisfied at all times, so there is no potential energy associated with the constraint.

Each constraint removes a number of degrees of freedom from the system. hoomd.md.compute.ThermodynamicQuantities accounts for these lost degrees of freedom when computing kinetic temperature and pressure. See hoomd.State.update_group_dof for details on when the degrees of freedom for a group are calculated.

Warning

Do not apply multiple constraint class instances to the same particle. Each instance solves for its constraints independently.

class hoomd.md.constrain.Constraint

Constraint force base class.

Constraint is the base class for all constraint forces.

Warning

This class should not be instantiated by users. The class can be used for isinstance or issubclass checks.

class hoomd.md.constrain.Distance(tolerance=0.001)

Constrain pairwise particle distances.

Parameters

tolerance (float) – Relative tolerance for constraint violation warnings.

Distance applies forces between particles that constrain the distances between particles to specific values. The algorithm implemented is described in:

  1. M. Yoneya, H. J. C. Berendsen, and K. Hirasawa, “A Non-Iterative Matrix Method for Constraint Molecular Dynamics Simulations,” Molecular Simulation, vol. 13, no. 6, pp. 395–405, 1994.

  2. M. Yoneya, “A Generalized Non-iterative Matrix Method for Constraint Molecular Dynamics Simulations,” Journal of Computational Physics, vol. 172, no. 1, pp. 188–197, Sep. 2001.

Each distance constraint takes the form:

\[\chi_{ij}(r) = \mathrm{minimum\_image}(\vec{r}_j - \vec{r}_i)^2 - d_{ij}^2 = 0\]

Where \(i\) and \(j\) are the the particle tags in the constraint_group and \(d_{ij}\) is the constraint distance as given by the system state.

The method sets the second derivative of the Lagrange multipliers with respect to time to zero, such that both the distance constraints and their time derivatives are conserved within the accuracy of the Velocity Verlet scheme (\(O(\delta t^2)\). It solves the corresponding linear system of equations to determine the force. The constraints are satisfied at \(t + 2 \delta t\), so the scheme is self-correcting and avoids drifts.

Add an instance of Distance to the integrator constraints list hoomd.md.Integrator.constraints to apply the force during the simulation.

Warning

In MPI simulations, it is an error when molecules defined by constraints extend over more than half the local domain size because all particles connected through constraints will be communicated between ranks as ghost particles.

Note

tolerance sets the tolerance to detect constraint violations and issue a warning message. It does not influence the computation of the constraint force.

tolerance

Relative tolerance for constraint violation warnings.

Type

float

class hoomd.md.constrain.Rigid

Constrain particles in rigid bodies.

Overview

Rigid bodies are defined by a single central particle and a number of constituent particles. All of these are particles in the simulation state and can interact with other particles via forces. The mass and moment of inertia of the central particle set the full mass and moment of inertia of the rigid body (constituent particle mass is ignored).

The central particle is at the center of mass of the rigid body and the orientation quaternion defines the rotation from the body space into the simulation box. Body space refers to a rigid body viewed in a particular reference frame. In body space, the center of mass of the body is at \((0,0,0)\) and the moment of inertia is diagonal. You specify the constituent particles to Rigid for each type of body in body coordinates. Then, Rigid takes control of those particles, and sets their position and orientation in the simulation box relative to the position and orientation of the central particle:

\[\begin{split}\vec{r}_c &= \vec{r}_b + \mathbf{q}_b \vec{r}_{c,\mathrm{body}} \mathbf{q}_b^* \\ \mathbf{q}_c &= \mathbf{q}_b \mathbf{q}_{c,\mathrm{body}}\end{split}\]

where \(\vec{r}_c\) and \(\mathbf{q}_c\) are the position and orientation of a constituent particle in the simulation box, \(\vec{r}_{c,\mathrm{body}}\) and \(\mathbf{q}_{c,\mathrm{body}}\) are the position and orientation of that particle in body coordinates, and \(\vec{r}_b\) and \(\mathbf{q}_b\) are the position and orientation of the central particle of that rigid body. In the simulation state, the body particle property defines the particle tag of the central particle: b = body[c]. In setting the body array, central particles should be set to their tag \(b_i = t_i\), constituent particles to their central particle’s tag \(b_i = t_{center}\), and free particles \(b_i = -1\)

Rigid transfers forces, energies, and torques from constituent particles to the central particle and adds them to those from the interaction on the central particle itself. The molecular integration methods use these forces and torques to integrate the equations of motion of the central particles (representing the whole rigid body) forward in time.

\[\begin{split}\vec{F}_b' &= \vec{F}_b + \sum_c \vec{F}_c \\ \vec{U}_b' &= U_b + \sum_c U_c \\ \vec{\tau}_b' &= \vec{\tau}_b + \sum_c \vec{\tau}_c + (\mathbf{q}_b \vec{r}_{c,\mathrm{body}} \mathbf{q}_b^*) \times \vec{F}_c\end{split}\]

Rigid also computes the corrected virial accounting for the effective constraint force (see Glaser 2020).

Defining bodies

Rigid accepts one local body definition per body type. The type of a body is the particle type of the central particle in that body. In this way, each particle of type R in the system configuration defines a body of type R.

As a convenience, you do not need to create placeholder entries for all of the constituent particles in your initial configuration. You can specify only the positions and orientations of all the central particles, then call create_bodies to create all constituent particles.

Warning

Place constituent particle placeholders in the simulation state when there are bonds between particles. create_bodies changes particle tags.

In the simulation state, the central particle of a rigid body must have a lower tag than all of its constituent particles. Constituent particles follow in monotonically increasing tag order, corresponding to the order they are defined in the argument to Rigid initialization. The central and constituent particles do not need to be contiguous. Additionally, you must set the body field for each of the particles in the rigid body to the tag of the central particle (for both the central and constituent particles). Set body to -1 for particles that do not belong to a rigid body (i.e. free bodies).

Integrating bodies

Set the rigid attribute of hoomd.md.Integrator to an instance of Rigid to apply rigid body constraints and apply an integration method (or methods) to the central and non-rigid particles (leave the constituent particles out - Rigid will set their position and orientation). Most integration methods support the integration of rotational degrees of freedom.

Example:

rigid_centers_and_free_filter = hoomd.filter.Rigid(
    ("center", "free"))
langevin = hoomd.md.methods.Langevin(
    filter=rigid_centers_and_free_filter, kT=1.0)

Thermodynamic quantities of bodies

hoomd.md.compute.ThermodynamicQuantities computes thermodynamic quantities (temperature, kinetic energy, etc.) over the central and non-rigid particles in the system, ignoring the consitutent particles. The body central particles contribute translational and rotational energies to the total.

Continuing simulations with rigid bodies.

To continue a simulation, use hoomd.write.GSD to write the system state to a file. GSD stores all of the particle data fields needed to reconstruct the state of the system, including the body tag, angular momentum, and orientation of the body. Continuing from a gsd file is equivalent to manually placing constituent particles. You must specify the same local body space environment to body as you did in the earlier simulation.

To set constituent particle types and coordinates for a rigid body use the body attribute.

Caution

The constituent particle type(s) must exist in the simulation state.

Example:

rigid = constrain.Rigid()
rigid.body['A'] = {
    "constituent_types": ['A_const', 'A_const'],
    "positions": [(0,0,1),(0,0,-1)],
    "orientations": [(1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0), (1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0)],
    "charges": [0.0, 0.0],
    "diameters": [1.0, 1.0]
    }
rigid.body['B'] = {
    "constituent_types": ['B_const', 'B_const'],
    "positions": [(0,0,.5),(0,0,-.5)],
    "orientations": [(1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0), (1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0)],
    "charges": [0.0, 1.0],
    "diameters": [1.5, 1.0]
    }

# Can set rigid body definition to be None explicitly.
rigid.body["A"] = None

Warning

Rigid will significantly slow simulation performance when frequently changing rigid body definitions or adding/removing particles from the simulation.

body

body is a mapping from the central particle type to a body definition represented as a dictionary. The mapping respects None as meaning that the type is not a rigid body center. All types are set to None by default. The keys for the body definition are:

  • constituent_types (list [str]): List of types of constituent particles.

  • positions (list [tuple [float, float, float]]): List of relative positions of constituent particles.

  • orientations (list [tuple [float, float, float, float]]): List of orientations (as quaternions) of constituent particles.

  • charges (list [float]): List of charges of constituent particles.

  • diameters (list [float]): List of diameters of constituent particles.

Type: TypeParameter [particle_type, dict]

create_bodies(state)

Create rigid bodies from central particles in state.

Parameters

state (hoomd.State) – The state in which to create rigid bodies.

create_bodies removes any existing constituent particles and adds new ones based on the body definitions in body. It overwrites all existing particle body tags in the state.