Computer Simulation of Irreversible Expansions via Molecular Dynamics, Smooth Particle Applied Mechanics, Eulerian, and Lagrangian Continuum Mechanics

We simulate the far-from-equilibrium irreversible expansion of a compressed ideal gas in two space dimensions. For this problem the particle trajectories from conventional smooth particle applied mechanics are isomorphic to those from a corresponding molecular dynamics simulation. The smooth-particle weight function used to describe the expanding gas is identical to the pair potential governing the molecular dynamics simulation. These many-body particle simulations are compared with those using a modified smooth-particle algorithm invented by Monaghan, as well as with those based on conventional grid-based Eulerian and Lagrangian methods.