Pressure Profile Calculations

NAMD supports the calculation of lateral pressure profiles as a function of the z-coordinate in the system. The algorithm is based on that of Lindahl and Edholm (JCP 2000), with modifications to enable Ewald sums based on Sonne et al (JCP 122, 2005).

The simulation space is partitioned into slabs, and half the virial due to the interaction between two particles is assigned to each of the slabs containing the particles. This amounts to employing the Harasima contour, rather than the Irving-Kirkwood contour, as was done in NAMD 2.5. The diagonal components of the pressure tensor for each slab, averaged over all timesteps since the previous output, are recorded in the NAMD output file. The units of pressure are the same as in the regular NAMD pressure output; i.e., bar.

The total virial contains contributions from up to four components: kinetic energy, bonded interactions, nonbonded interactions, and an Ewald sum. All but the Ewald sums are computed online during a normal simulation run (this is a change from NAMD 2.5, when nonbonded contributions to the Ewald sum were always computed offline). If the simulations are performed using PME, the Ewald contribution should be estimated using a separate, offline calculation based on the saved trajectory files. The nonbonded contribution using a cutoff different from the one used in the simulation may also be computed offline in the same fashion as for Ewald, if desired.

Pressure profile calculations may be performed in either constant volume or constant pressure conditions. If constant pressure is enabled, the slabs thickness will be rescaled along with the unit cell; the dcdUnitCell option will also be switched on so that unit cell information is stored in the trajectory file.

NAMD 2.6 now reports the lateral pressure partitioned by interaction type. Three groups are reported: kinetic + rigid bond restraints (referred to as ``internal", bonded, and nonbonded. If Ewald pressure profile calculations are active, the Ewald contribution is reported in the nonbonded section, and no other contributions are reported.

NAMD 2.6 also permits the pressure profile to be partitioned by atom type. Up to 15 atom groups may be assigned, and individual contribution of each group (for the ``internal" pressures) and the pairwise contributions of interactions within and between groups (for the nonbonded and bonded pressures) are reported in the output file.

pressureProfile $<$ compute pressure profile $>$
Acceptable Values: on or off
Default Value: off
Description: When active, NAMD will compute kinetic, bonded and nonbonded (but not reciprocal space) contributions to the pressure profile. Results will be recorded in the NAMD output file in lines with the format PRESSUREPROFILE: ts Axx Ayy Azz Bxx Byy Bzz ... , where ts is the timestep, followed by the three diagonal components of the pressure tensor in the first slab (the slab with lowest z), then the next lowest slab, and so forth. The output will reflect the pressure profile averaged over all the steps since the last output.

NAMD also reports kinetic, bonded and nonbonded contributions separately, using the same format as the total pressure, but on lines beginning with PPROFILEINTERNAL, PPROFILEBONDED, and PPROFILENONBONDED. pressureProfileSlabs $<$ Number of slabs in the spatial partition $>$
Acceptable Values: Positive integer
Default Value: 10
Description: NAMD divides the entire periodic cell into horizontal slabs of equal thickness; pressureProfileSlabs specifies the number of such slabs.

pressureProfileFreq $<$ How often to output pressure profile data $>$
Acceptable Values: Positive integer
Default Value: 1
Description: Specifies the number of timesteps between output of pressure profile data.

pressureProfileEwald $<$ Enable pressure profile Ewald sums $>$
Acceptable Values: on or off
Default Value: off
Description: When enabled, only the Ewald contribution to the pressure profile will be computed. For trajectory analysis the recommended way to use this option is to use the NAMD Tcl scripting interface as described in Sec. 2.2.2 to run for 0 steps, so that NAMD prints the pressure profile without performing any dynamics.

The Ewald sum method is as described in Sonne et al. (JCP 122, 2005). The number of $k$ vectors to use along each periodic cell dimension is specified by the pressureProfileEwald$n$ parameters described below. pressureProfileEwaldX $<$ Ewald grid size along X $>$
Acceptable Values: Positive integer
Default Value: 10
Description: pressureProfileEwaldY $<$ Ewald grid size along Y $>$
Acceptable Values: Positive integer
Default Value: 10
Description: pressureProfileEwaldZ $<$ Ewald grid size along Z $>$
Acceptable Values: Positive integer
Default Value: 10
Description:

pressureProfileAtomTypes $<$ Number of atom type partitions $>$
Acceptable Values: Positive integer
Default Value: 1
Description: If pressureProfileAtomTypes is greater than 1, NAMD will calculate the separate contributions of each type of atom to the internal, bonded, nonbonded, and total pressure. In the case of the internal contribution, there will be $n$ pressure profile data sets reported on each PPROFILEINTERNAL line, where $n$ is the number of atom types. All the partial pressures for atom type 1 will be followed by those for atom type 2, and so forth. The other three pressure profile reports will contain $n(n+1)/2$ data sets. For example, if there are $n=3$ atom types, the six data sets arising from the three inter-partition and the three intra-partition interactions will be reported in the following order: 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 2-2, 2-3, 3-3. The total pressure profile, reported on the PRESSUREPROFILE line, will contain the internal contributions in the data sets corresponding to 1-1, 2-2, etc.

pressureProfileAtomTypesFile $<$ Atom type partition assignments $>$
Acceptable Values: PDB file
Default Value: coordinate file
Description: If pressureProfileAtomTypes is greater than 1, NAMD will assign atoms to types based on the corresponding value in pressureProfileAtomTypesCol. The type for each atom must be strictly less than pressureProfileAtomTypes!

pressureProfileAtomTypesCol $<$ pressureProfileAtomTypesFile PDB column $>$
Acceptable Values: PDB file
Default Value: B
Description:

Here is an example snippet from a NAMD input that can be used to compute the Ewald component of the pressure profile. It assumes that the coordinates were saved in the dcd file pp03.dcd) every 500 timesteps.

Pme             on
PmeGridSizeX    64
PmeGridSizeY    64
PmeGridSizeZ    64

exclude         scaled1-4
1-4scaling      1.0  

switching on
switchdist      9
cutoff          10
pairlistdist    11

pressureProfile        on
pressureProfileSlabs   30
pressureProfileFreq    100
pressureProfileAtomTypes 6
pressureProfileAtomTypesFile atomtypes.pdb
pressureProfileEwald  on
pressureProfileEwaldX  16
pressureProfileEwaldY  16
pressureProfileEwaldZ  16

set ts 0
firstTimestep $ts

coorfile open dcd pp03.dcd
while { [coorfile read] != -1 } {
  incr ts 500
  firstTimestep $ts
  run 0
}
coorfile close