<h2>Description<a class="headerlink" href="#description" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>Add a viscous damping force to atoms in the group that is proportional
to the velocity of the atom. The added force can be thought of as a
frictional interaction with implicit solvent, i.e. the no-slip Stokes
drag on a spherical particle. In granular simulations this can be
useful for draining the kinetic energy from the system in a controlled
fashion. If used without additional thermostatting (to add kinetic
energy to the system), it has the effect of slowly (or rapidly)
freezing the system; hence it can also be used as a simple energy
minimization technique.</p>
<p>The damping force F is given by F = - gamma * velocity. The larger
the coefficient, the faster the kinetic energy is reduced. If the
optional keyword <em>scale</em> is used, gamma can scaled up or down by the
specified factor for atoms of that type. It can be used multiple
times to adjust gamma for several atom types.</p>
<div class="admonition note">
<p class="first admonition-title">Note</p>
<p class="last">You should specify gamma in force/velocity units. This is not
the same as mass/time units, at least for some of the LAMMPS
<a class="reference internal" href="units.html"><em>units</em></a> options like “real” or “metal” that are not
self-consistent.</p>
</div>
<p>In a Brownian dynamics context, gamma = Kb T / D, where Kb =
Boltzmann’s constant, T = temperature, and D = particle diffusion
coefficient. D can be written as Kb T / (3 pi eta d), where eta =
dynamic viscosity of the frictional fluid and d = diameter of
particle. This means gamma = 3 pi eta d, and thus is proportional to
the viscosity of the fluid and the particle diameter.</p>
<p>In the current implementation, rather than have the user specify a
viscosity, gamma is specified directly in force/velocity units. If
needed, gamma can be adjusted for atoms of different sizes
(i.e. sigma) by using the <em>scale</em> keyword.</p>
<p>Note that Brownian dynamics models also typically include a randomized
force term to thermostat the system at a chosen temperature. The <a class="reference internal" href="fix_langevin.html"><em>fix langevin</em></a> command does this. It has the same
viscous damping term as fix viscous and adds a random force to each
atom. The random force term is proportional to the sqrt of the chosen
thermostatting temperature. Thus if you use fix langevin with a
target T = 0, its random force term is zero, and you are essentially
performing the same operation as fix viscous. Also note that the
gamma of fix viscous is related to the damping parameter of <a class="reference internal" href="fix_langevin.html"><em>fix langevin</em></a>, however the former is specified in units
of force/velocity and the latter in units of time, so that it can more
easily be used as a thermostat.</p>
<hr class="docutils" />
<p>Styles with a <em>cuda</em> suffix are functionally the same as the
corresponding style without the suffix. They have been optimized to
run faster, depending on your available hardware, as discussed in
<a class="reference internal" href="Section_accelerate.html"><em>Section_accelerate</em></a> of the manual. The
accelerated styles take the same arguments and should produce the same
results, except for round-off and precision issues.</p>
<p>These accelerated styles are part of the USER-CUDA package. They are
only enabled if LAMMPS was built with that package. See the <a class="reference internal" href="Section_start.html#start-3"><span>Making LAMMPS</span></a> section for more info.</p>
<p>You can specify the accelerated styles explicitly in your input script
by including their suffix, or you can use the <a class="reference internal" href="Section_start.html#start-7"><span>-suffix command-line switch</span></a> when you invoke LAMMPS, or you can
use the <a class="reference internal" href="suffix.html"><em>suffix</em></a> command in your input script.</p>
<p>See <a class="reference internal" href="Section_accelerate.html"><em>Section_accelerate</em></a> of the manual for
more instructions on how to use the accelerated styles effectively.</p>
<h2>Restart, fix_modify, output, run start/stop, minimize info<a class="headerlink" href="#restart-fix-modify-output-run-start-stop-minimize-info" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>No information about this fix is written to <a class="reference internal" href="restart.html"><em>binary restart files</em></a>. None of the <a class="reference internal" href="fix_modify.html"><em>fix_modify</em></a> options
are relevant to this fix. No global or per-atom quantities are stored
by this fix for access by various <a class="reference internal" href="Section_howto.html#howto-15"><span>output commands</span></a>. No parameter of this fix can
be used with the <em>start/stop</em> keywords of the <a class="reference internal" href="run.html"><em>run</em></a> command.</p>
<p>The forces due to this fix are imposed during an energy minimization,
invoked by the <a class="reference internal" href="minimize.html"><em>minimize</em></a> command. This fix should only
be used with damped dynamics minimizers that allow for
non-conservative forces. See the <a class="reference internal" href="min_style.html"><em>min_style</em></a> command
for details.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="restrictions">
<h2>Restrictions<a class="headerlink" href="#restrictions" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<blockquote>
<div>none</div></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="section" id="related-commands">
<h2>Related commands<a class="headerlink" href="#related-commands" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
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