Statistical mechanics as guidance for particle‐based computational methods

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show that there are some underlying principles of granular media that can be derived from statistical mechanics and that could be useful when considered in the context of computer simulations.Design/methodology/approach – The fundamentals of statistical mechanics are presented and they are revised in order to set up a suitable approach for jammed static granular media. After a conceptual discussion about the entropy of granular matter, some specific statistical mechanics approaches that have been used for granular media are reviewed. Finally, a numerical simulation, conducted using an open source molecular dynamics code, is included as an illustrative example.Findings – It is shown qualitatively how statistical mechanics can be used to analytically compute the expected statistical distribution of some quantities in numerical simulations.Research limitations/implications – The computation of entropy from histograms and the establishment of the constraints of the en...

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