In the present paper, molecular dynamics simulations were performed to study the influence of two temperature control strategies on water flow behaviour inside planar nanochannel. In the simulations, the flow was induced by the force acting on each water molecule in the channel. Two temperature control strategies were considered: (a) frozen wall simulations, in which the dynamics of confining wall atoms was not solved and the thermostat was applied to the water, and (b) dynamic wall simulations, in which the dynamics of confining wall atoms was solved, and the thermostat was applied to walls while water was simulated in the microcanonical ensemble. The simulation results show that the considered temperature control strategies has no effect on the shape of the water flow profile, and flow behaviour in the channel is well described by the Navier–Stokes equation solution with added slip velocity. Meanwhile, the slip velocity occurring at the boundaries of the channel is linearly dependent on the magnitude of the flow inducing force in both frozen wall and dynamic wall simulations. However, the slip velocity is considerably greater in simulations when the wall dynamics are solved in contrast to the frozen wall simulations.
Biophysics-based, patient-specific modeling remains challenging for clinical translation, particularly for cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flow where anatomical detail and computational cost are tightly coupled. We present a computational framework for steady net CSF redistribution in an MRI-derived cranial CSF domain reconstructed from T2-weighted imaging, including the ventricular system, cranial subarachnoid space, and periarterial pathways, to the extent resolvable by clinical MRI. Cranial CSF spaces were segmented in 3D Slicer and a steady Darcy formulation with prescribed CSF production/absorption was solved in COMSOL Multiphysics®. Geometrical and flow descriptors were quantified using region-based projection operations. We assessed discretization cost–accuracy trade-offs by comparing first- and second-order finite elements. First-order elements produced a 1.4% difference in transmantle pressure and a <10% difference in element-wise mass-weighted velocity metric for 90% of elements, while reducing computation time by 75% (20 to 5 min) and peak memory usage five-fold (150 to 30 GB). This proof-of-concept framework provides a computationally tractable baseline for studying steady net CSF pathway redistribution and sensitivity to boundary assumptions, and may support future patient-specific investigations in pathological conditions such as subarachnoid hemorrhage, hydrocephalus and brain tumors.
In the present paper, we propose a novel simulation approach that allows one to capture the steady-state evaporation into virtual vacuum state by maintaining a constant number of atoms within the liquid phase during the simulations. The proposed method was used to perform virtual vacuum simulations of argon at a temperature of 90 K in order to study the effects of the chosen simulation temperature control approach on the system’s temperature profiles, spontaneous evaporation rates, and the energetic characteristics of the evaporating atoms. The results show that the expected non-uniform temperature profile across the liquid phase can be flattened out by dividing the liquid phase into separately thermostated bins. However, the desired liquid surface temperature can be achieved only when the thermostat region boundary is placed outside the liquid phase. The obtained relationship between the surface temperature and the spontaneous evaporation rate show that the spontaneous evaporation rate and corresponding evaporation coefficient evaluation may change up to 21% when the surface temperature changes in a narrow temperature interval of 2.45 K. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that the thermostat region boundary position has no impact on the energetic characteristics of the evaporating argon atoms, even when the boundary is placed outside the liquid phase.