Determination of Shear Viscosity of Molecular Nitrogen (N2): Molecular Dynamic Hard Rotor Methodology and the Results

Abstract

Determination of shear viscosity of molecular nitrogen (N(2)) by molecular dynamics (MD) in the high density range needs explicit incorporation of the rotational motion and therefore precise knowledge of angular dependence of N(2)-N(2) intermolecular potential. Newly designed Couette flow nonequilibrium molecular dynamic (NEMD) simulation procedure employs corrugated moving boundary, coupling the moving walls to translational and rotational motion exactly. Low density data on nitrogen viscosity show good agreement between MD data and experiment, confirming the radial dependence of the potential derived from quantum mechanical (QM) high precision calculations (coupled-cluster singles-and-doubles with a perturbative triples corrections [CCSD(T)]). Additionally, the angular dependence of the potential is verified using shear viscosity data for high density region, obtained from newly developed molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. It was demonstrated that the corrugated wall flow simulations provide results that are independent of the details of wall potential, fulfilling a basic requirement for application of MD simulations. These results are in good agreement with the equilibrium molecular dynamics (EMD) viscosity, derived from the Green-Kubo formula. Derived analytical dependence of the shear viscosity on the density and temperature shows that the MD data are in good agreement with experiment. Thus, MD simulations indicate that the CCSD(T) potential angular form is sufficiently precise for determination of the viscosity in a wide range of temperature and pressure.