fix addtorque command — LAMMPS 15 May 2015 version documentation

# fix addtorque command

## Syntax

    fix ID group-ID addtorque Tx Ty Tz

- ID, group-ID are documented in fix command
- addtorque = style name of this fix command
- Tx,Ty,Tz = torque component values (torque units)
- any of Tx,Ty,Tz can be a variable (see below)

## Examples

    fix kick bead addtorque 2.0 3.0 5.0
    fix kick bead addtorque 0.0 0.0 v_oscillate

## Description

Add a set of forces to each atom in the group such that:

- the components of the total torque applied on the group (around its center of mass) are Tx,Ty,Tz
- the group would move as a rigid body in the absence of other forces.

This command can be used to drive a group of atoms into rotation.

Any of the 3 quantities defining the torque components can be specified as an equal-style variable, namely Tx, Ty, Tz. If the value is a variable, it should be specified as v_name, where name is the variable name. In this case, the variable will be evaluated each timestep, and its value used to determine the torque component.

Equal-style variables can specify formulas with various mathematical functions, and include thermo_style command keywords for the simulation box parameters and timestep and elapsed time. Thus it is easy to specify a time-dependent torque.

## Restart, fix_modify, output, run start/stop, minimize info

No information about this fix is written to binary restart files.

The fix_modify energy option is supported by this fix to add the potential “energy” inferred by the added forces to the system’s potential energy as part of thermodynamic output. This is a fictitious quantity but is needed so that the minimize command can include the forces added by this fix in a consistent manner. I.e. there is a decrease in potential energy when atoms move in the direction of the added forces.

This fix computes a global scalar and a global 3-vector, which can be accessed by various output commands. The scalar is the potential energy discussed above. The vector is the total torque on the group of atoms before the forces on individual atoms are changed by the fix. The scalar and vector values calculated by this fix are “extensive”.

No parameter of this fix can be used with the start/stop keywords of the run command.

The forces due to this fix are imposed during an energy minimization, invoked by the minimize command. You should not specify force components with a variable that has time-dependence for use with a minimizer, since the minimizer increments the timestep as the iteration count during the minimization.

## Restrictions

This fix is part of the USER-MISC package. It is only enabled if LAMMPS was built with that package. See the Making LAMMPS section for more info.

## Related commands

fix addforce

Default: none