Equilibrium molecular dynamics calculation of the bulk viscosity of liquid water

Abstract

Twenty independent equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations were performed in NVE ensemble to calculate the bulk viscosity of water at a temperature of 303 K and a density of 0.999 gcm−3. The energy of each simulation with a production time of 200ps was conserved within 1 part in 104. By stopping the velocity-scaling procedure at a proper step, the energies of independent simulations were specified precisely. This caused the simulations of different start configurations to sample the same NVE ensemble. The shear viscosity of SPC/E water obtained in the present study was 6.5±0.4 × 10−4 Pas, which is in close agreement with a previous calculation in the NVT ensemble (Balasubramanian, S., Mundy, C. J., and Klein, M. L., 1996, J. clzern. Phys., 105, 11 190). The bulk viscosity was 15.5 ± 1.6 × 10−4 Pas, which is 27% smaller than the experimental value. Thus, like its behaviour in predicting the shear viscosity, the SPC/E model also underestimates the bulk viscosity of real water.