Will Glover wrote:
Hi,
I have constructed a gromacs MD simulation of liquid tetrahydrofuran (at RTP) 
in which I'm treating each molecule as a charge group.  When using a Switch for 
both the Coulomb and VdW interactions I see artifacts in the radial 
distribution function of the Oxygen--alpha-carbon (and other pair) distances 
around the switching region.

I understand that these artifacts occur in atom-based truncation schemes and of course PME fixes the problem (see e.g. http://doi.wiley.com/10.1002/jcc.10117); however, I would ultimately like to interface Gromacs with my own mixed quantum/classical code for which the Ewald method is highly nontrivial and a simpler group-based truncation would suffice.
Does Gromacs 4.05 only use atom-based truncation, even when charge groups are 
defined?  I was unable to clearly determine this from the manual.  If so, is 
there a work-around to achieve group-based switching that does not involve 
hacking the code?

Gromacs uses charge-group based neighborsearching: if the centers of the charge group are within the cutoff all the interactions are computed. However since you use a shift function the energies beyond 1.3 nm will be zero, the shift function is atom based. Would you have selected a real cut-off then all the atom pairs would be taken into account.

What is to be preferred does however depend on the size of your molecule. In this case the molecule is roughly 0.4 nm. My general advice is to make charge groups small, such that you have a homegeneous system. In your case the oxygen with to flanking CH2 groups could be one, and the other two CH2 groups could be in a group each. This way you could also reduce rlist slightly.

By the way, if you use nstlist = 1, neighborsearching is done each step, and hence rlist > rcoulomb does not make sense. If you set nstlist = 5 or so you do need rlist > rcoulomb for proper energy conservation.

I have pasted condensed configuration files below for those that are 
interested...

Many thanks in advance!

*** mdout.mdp ***
; RUN CONTROL PARAMETERS
integrator               = md
; Start time and timestep in ps
tinit                    = 0
dt                       = 0.004
nsteps                   = 250000
; For exact run continuation or redoing part of a run
; Part index is updated automatically on checkpointing (keeps files separate)
simulation_part          = 1
init_step                = 0
; mode for center of mass motion removal
comm_mode                = None

; NEIGHBORSEARCHING PARAMETERS
; nblist update frequency
nstlist                  = 1
; ns algorithm (simple or grid)
ns_type                  = grid
; Periodic boundary conditions: xyz, no, xy
pbc                      = xyz
periodic_molecules       = no
; nblist cut-off rlist = 1.625

; OPTIONS FOR ELECTROSTATICS AND VDW
; Method for doing electrostatics
coulombtype              = SWITCH
rcoulomb_switch          = 1.1
rcoulomb                 = 1.3
; Relative dielectric constant for the medium and the reaction field
epsilon_r                = 1
epsilon_rf               = 1
; Method for doing Van der Waals
vdwtype                  = Switch
; cut-off lengths rvdw_switch = 1.1
rvdw                     = 1.3
; Apply long range dispersion corrections for Energy and Pressure
DispCorr                 = no
; Extension of the potential lookup tables beyond the cut-off
table-extension          = 4
; Seperate tables between energy group pairs
energygrp_table =
; OPTIONS FOR WEAK COUPLING ALGORITHMS
; Temperature coupling tcoupl = Nose-Hoover
; Groups to couple separately
tc_grps                  = System
; Time constant (ps) and reference temperature (K)
tau_t                    = 0.5
ref_t                    = 298
; Pressure coupling Pcoupl = no

; OPTIONS FOR BONDS constraints = all-bonds
; Type of constraint algorithm
constraint_algorithm     = LINCS
; Do not constrain the start configuration
continuation             = no
; Highest order in the expansion of the constraint coupling matrix
lincs_order              = 6
; Number of iterations in the final step of LINCS. 1 is fine for
; normal simulations, but use 2 to conserve energy in NVE runs.
; For energy minimization with constraints it should be 4 to 8.
lincs_iter               = 2
; Lincs will write a warning to the stderr if in one step a bond
; rotates over more degrees than
lincs_warnangle          = 30
; Convert harmonic bonds to morse potentials
morse                    = no


*** thf.itp (note, my THF is rigid and planar, so I use a 3-membered ring and 
virtual sites to achieve this) ***
[ defaults ]
; nbft   cr   gp   fLJ   fQQ
   1     2    1    1      1

[ atomtypes ]
;  at       m                q   pt    V        W
   O    26.51056525660896 -0.500  A  0.3000  0.7112584
   T2   22.79841737169552  0.000  A  0.0000  0.0000000
   CH2A 0.000000000000000  0.250  V  0.3800  0.4937137
   CH2B 0.000000000000000  0.000  V  0.3905  0.4937137

[ moleculetype ]
; Name nrexcl
THF      3
[ atoms ]
;   nr      type     resnr resid   atom  cgnr   charge  mass
     1      O        1    THF     O1    1     -0.500
     2      CH2A     1    THF     CA1   1      0.250
     3      CH2A     1    THF     CA2   1      0.250
     4      CH2B     1    THF     CB1   1      0.000
     5      CH2B     1    THF     CB2   1      0.000
     6      T2       1    THF     T21   1      0.000
     7      T2       1    THF     T22   1      0.000

[ constraints]
;  ai  aj   funct      c0             c1
   1   6      1   0.2184048538518238
   1   7      1   0.2184048538518238
   6   7      1   0.2183193593425659

[ virtual_sites3 ]
; Site from funct a b
  2  1  6  7  1   0.7438730952158359 -0.3213938637031660
  3  1  6  7  1  -0.3213938637031660  0.7438730952158359
  4  1  6  7  1   0.9516115829366237  0.2512330161413899
  5  1  6  7  1   0.2512330161413898  0.9516115829366238

[ exclusions ]
  1  2  3  4  5  6  7
  2  1  3  4  5  6  7
  3  1  2  4  5  6  7
  4  1  2  3  5  6  7
  5  1  2  3  4  6  7
  6  1  2  3  4  5  7
  7  1  2  3  4  5  6



--
David van der Spoel, Ph.D., Professor of Biology
Molec. Biophys. group, Dept. of Cell & Molec. Biol., Uppsala University.
Box 596, 75124 Uppsala, Sweden. Phone:  +46184714205. Fax: +4618511755.
sp...@xray.bmc.uu.se    sp...@gromacs.org   http://folding.bmc.uu.se
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