Re: Gradual Heating Periodic Error

From: Hardy, David Joseph (dhardy_at_illinois.edu)
Date: Tue Sep 13 2016 - 14:13:52 CDT

Dear Jack,

You are mixing various protocols in your simulation that don't make sense together. You have constant temperature and constant pressure running together with your heating protocol. First, you should get rid of the thermostat and barostat, as they are working against your heating protocol. Also, the fatal error you are seeing is likely due to the barostat, so that should go away. Second, your reassignFreq and reassignIncr choices are too small. Keep in mind that a temperature reassignment is setting random velocities (to that temperature) for all of your atoms, but this suggests that your system will require some number of steps to "settle down." More typically, you would change the temperature using a bigger increment and allow the system to equilibrate to that new temperature over, say, 100 to 1000 steps. So as a smallest increment, try reassignFreq 200 and reassignIncr 1, or maybe better try larger increments of reassignFreq 1000 and reassignIncr 5.

Best regards,
Dave

--
David J. Hardy, Ph.D.
Theoretical and Computational Biophysics
Beckman Institute, University of Illinois
dhardy_at_illinois.edu<mailto:dhardy_at_illinois.edu>
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~dhardy/
On Sep 13, 2016, at 8:34 AM, Jackson Cavett <jcavett_at_mail.bradley.edu<mailto:jcavett_at_mail.bradley.edu>> wrote:
Hello NAMD Users,
I am attempting to heat a molecule from 10K to 310K over the course of a few simulations. I put in the following parameters to accomplish this heating:
reassignFreq 2
reassignTemp 10
reassignIncr 0.01
reassignHold 60
However, when I run the simulation, I get the periodic boundary error on the first timestep. Here is the log file which shows the problem:
REINITIALIZING VELOCITIES AT STEP 100000 TO 10 KELVIN.
TCL: Running for 10000 steps
REASSIGNING VELOCITIES AT STEP 100000 TO 60 KELVIN.
PRESSURE: 100000 110.253 -0.316211 -6.80342 -0.316211 126.441 1.37312 -6.80342 1.37312 145.667
GPRESSURE: 100000 116.487 -0.516909 -5.56659 0.0868719 131.886 1.15381 -5.4699 1.44817 149.358
ETITLE...
OPENING EXTENDED SYSTEM TRAJECTORY FILE
REASSIGNING VELOCITIES AT STEP 100002 TO 60 KELVIN.
FATAL ERROR: Periodic cell has become too small for original patch grid!
Possible solutions are to restart from a recent checkpoint,
increase margin, or disable useFlexibleCell for liquid simulation.
I don't understand why the temperature is being reassigned to 60K when I stated that it should be reassigned to 10K every two timesteps. Can anyone explain what is happening here?
Here is the full configuration file I used. Please note what I did with the binVelocities. I'm not sure if I can comment them out like that when I use a restart file, so please let me know what I should do with that. The reason I comment it out is that I want to set the temperature of my simulation while still using a restart file.
#############################################################
## JOB DESCRIPTION                                         ##
#############################################################
# Equilibration of alphVbeta3 after minimization
# Shorter simulations so dcd can be analyzed
#############################################################
## ADJUSTABLE PARAMETERS                                   ##
#############################################################
structure          ../alphaVbeta6_wb.psf
coordinates        ../alphaVbeta6_wb.pdb
set temperature    10
set outputname     beta6_equil_1
# Continuing a job from the restart files
if {1} {
set inputname ../minimization/beta6_min_fixed_protein
binCoordinates $inputname.restart.coor
#binVelocities $inputname.restart.vel
extendedSystem $inputname.xsc
}
firsttimestep      100000
#############################################################
## SIMULATION PARAMETERS                                   ##
#############################################################
# Input
paraTypeCharmm    on
parameters          ../par_all27_prot_lipid.inp
temperature         $temperature
# Force-Field Parameters
exclude             scaled1-4
1-4scaling          1.0
cutoff              12.0
switching           on
switchdist          10.0
pairlistdist        14.0
# Integrator Parameters
timestep            2.0  ;# 2fs/step
rigidBonds          all  ;# needed for 2fs steps
nonbondedFreq       1
fullElectFrequency  2
stepspercycle       10
# Constant Temperature Control
langevin            on    ;# do langevin dynamics
langevinDamping     1.     ;# damping coefficient (gamma) of 1/ps
langevinTemp        $temperature
langevinHydrogen    no    ;# don't couple langevin bath to hydrogens
# Periodic Boundary Conditions
cellBasisVector1     121  0.0   0.0
cellBasisVector2     0.0  93   0.0
cellBasisVector3     0.0  0.0  57.5
cellOrigin          20.045  -30.903  25.591
wrapWater    on
wrapAll             on
wrapNearest    off
# PME (for full-system periodic electrostatics)
PME                 yes
PMEGridSpacing      1.0
#manual grid definition
#PMEGridSizeX        45
#PMEGridSizeY        45
#PMEGridSizeZ        48
# Constant Pressure Control (variable volume)
useGroupPressure      yes ;# needed for rigidBonds
useFlexibleCell       no
useConstantArea       no
langevinPiston        on
langevinPistonTarget  1.01325 ;#  in bar -> 1 atm
langevinPistonPeriod  100.0
langevinPistonDecay   50.0
langevinPistonTemp    $temperature
# Output
outputName          $outputname
restartfreq         1000     ;# 500steps = every 1ps
dcdfreq             500
xstFreq             500
outputEnergies      200
outputPressure      200
#############################################################
## EXTRA PARAMETERS                                        ##
#############################################################
#############################################################
## EXECUTION SCRIPT                                        ##
#############################################################
#For heating, use temperature reassignment
reassignFreq 2
reassignTemp 10
reassignIncr 0.01
reassignHold 60
# Minimization
#minimize            10000
#reinitvels          $temperature
reinitvels $temperature
run 10000 ;#
Thank you all for your help!
Jack

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