Constructing aN ear-Minimal-Volume Computational Bo xf or Molecular Dynamics Simulations with Periodi cB oundary Conditions
Tsjerk A. Wassenaar · 2003
In many M.D. simulations the simulated system consists of a single macromolecule in a solvent. Usually, one is not interested in the behaviour of the solvent, so, the CPU time may be minimized by minimizing the amount of solvent. For a given molecule and cut-o radius this may be done by constructing a computational box with near minimal volume. In this article a method is presented to construct such a box, and the method is tested on a significant number of macromolecules. The volume of the resulting boxes proves to be typically 40% of the volume of usual boxes, and as a result the simulation time decreases with typically 60%.