RESEARCH NOTE A method for predicting the virial coefficients of hard linear homonuclear molecules

This paper proposes a simple method for predicting the virial coefficients, up to the fifth, for hard linear homonuclear molecules. The method uses the virial coefficients for hard spherocylinders and hard linear tangent spheres to obtain the virial coefficients of linear fused hard spheres. The results are in very good agreement with the known values for the latter kind of molecules. Thus the method is suitable for predictive purposes when virial coefficients are not known, which makes it useful for the derivation of certain equations of state.