Steric

The Steric potential is used to model repulsive interactions between particles, typically representing excluded volume effects. It is implemented in two forms: Steric6 and Steric12.

Steric6

\[U = \epsilon \left(\frac{\sigma}{r}\right)^6\]

Steric12

\[U = \epsilon \left(\frac{\sigma}{r}\right)^{12}\]

where:

\(\epsilon\) is the strength of the interaction
\(\sigma\) is the characteristic distance
\(r\) is the distance between particles

type: NonBonded, Steric6 or Steric12
parameters:
- cutOffFactor: real: Interaction range as a multiple of sigma
data:
- name_i: string: Type of particle i
- name_j: string: Type of particle j
- epsilon: real: Interaction strength \([energy]\)
- sigma: real: Characteristic distance \([distance]\)

Example:

"steric":{
  "type":["NonBonded","Steric6"],
  "parameters":{
    "cutOffFactor":2.5,
    "condition":"all"
  },
  "labels":["name_i", "name_j", "epsilon", "sigma"],
  "data":[
    ["A", "A", 1.0, 1.0],
    ["A", "B", 0.8, 0.9],
    ["B", "B", 1.2, 1.1]
  ]
}

Tip

The Steric potential is purely repulsive and is often used to model the core repulsion between particles or to prevent overlap in coarse-grained simulations.