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The microscopic definition for the Cauchy stress tensor has been examined in the past from many different perspectives. This has led to different expressions for the stress tensor and consequently the "correct" definition has been a subject of debate and controversy. In this work, a unified framework is set up in which all existing definitions can be derived, thus establishing the connections between them. The framework is based on the non-equilibrium statistical mechanics procedure introduced by Irving, Kirkwood and Noll, followed by spatial averaging. The Irving--Kirkwood--Noll procedure is extended to multi-body potentials with continuously differentiable extensions and generalized to non-straight bonds, which may be important for particles with internal structure. Connections between this approach and the direct spatial averaging approach of Murdoch and Hardy are discussed and the Murdoch--Hardy procedure is systematized. Possible sources of non-uniqueness of the stress tensor, resulting separately from both procedures, are identified and addressed. Numerical experiments using molecular dynamics and lattice statics are conducted to examine the behavior of the resulting stress definitions including their convergence with the spatial averaging domain size and their symmetry properties.Comment: 86 page

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A two-step unified framework for the evaluation of continuum field expressions from molecular simulations for arbitrary interatomic potentials is presented. First, pointwise continuum fields are obtained using a generalization of the Irving-Kirkwood procedure to arbitrary multibody potentials. Two ambiguities associated with the original Irving-Kirkwood procedure (which was limited to pair potential interactions) are addressed in its generalization. The first ambiguity is due to the nonuniqueness of the decomposition of the force on an atom as a sum of central forces, which is a result of the nonuniqueness of the potential energy representation in terms of distances between the particles. This is in turn related to the shape space of the system. The second ambiguity is due to the nonuniqueness of the energy decomposition between particles. The latter can be completely avoided through an alternate derivation for the energy balance. It is found that the expressions for the specific internal energy and the heat flux obtained through the alternate derivation are quite different from the original Irving-Kirkwood procedure and appear to be more physically reasonable. Next, in the second step of the unified framework, spatial averaging is applied to the pointwise field to obtain the corresponding macroscopic quantities. These lead to expressions suitable for computation in molecular dynamics simulations. It is shown that the important commonly-used microscopic definitions for the stress tensor and heat flux vector are recovered in this process as special cases (generalized to arbitrary multibody potentials). Several numerical experiments are conducted to compare the new expression for the specific internal energy with the original one.

We derive the atomistic representations of the elastic tensors appearing in the linearized theory of first strain-gradient elasticity for an arbitrary multi-lattice. In addition to the classical (2nd-Piola) stress and elastic moduli tensors, these include the rank-three double-stress tensor, the rank-five tensor of mixed elastic moduli, and the rank-six tensor of strain-gradient elastic moduli. The atomistic representations are closed-form analytical expressions in terms of the first and second derivatives of the interatomic potential with respect to interatomic distances, and dyadic products of relative atomic positions. Moreover, all expressions are local, in the sense that they depend only on the atomic neighborhood of a lattice site. Our results emanate from the condition of energetic equivalence between continuum and atomistic representations of a crystal, when the kinematics of the latter is governed by the Cauchy-Born rule. Using the derived expressions, we prove that the odd-order tensors vanish if the lattice basis admits central-symmetry. The analytical expressions are implemented as a KIM compliant algorithm to compute the strain gradient elastic tensors for various materials. Numerical results are presented to compare representative interatomic potentials used in the literature for cubic crystals, including simple lattices and multi-lattices. We observe that central potentials exhibit generalized Cauchy relations for the rank-six tensor of strain-gradient elastic moduli. In addition, this tensor is found to be indefinite for many potentials. We discuss the relationship between indefiniteness and material stability. Finally, the atomistic representations are specialized to central potentials in simple lattices. These expressions are used with analytical potentials to study the sensitivity of the elastic tensors to the choice of the cutoff radius