# Virial stress

Virial stress is a measure of mechanical stress on an atomic scale for homogeneous systems.

## Definition

Virial stress is given by

${\displaystyle \tau _{ij}={\frac {1}{\Omega }}\sum _{k\in \Omega }\left(-m^{(k)}(u_{i}^{(k)}-{\bar {u}}_{i})(u_{j}^{(k)}-{\bar {u}}_{j})+{\frac {1}{2}}\sum _{\ell \in \Omega }(x_{i}^{(\ell )}-x_{i}^{(k)})f_{j}^{(k\ell )}\right)}$

where

• ${\displaystyle k}$ and ${\displaystyle \ell }$ are atoms in the domain,
• ${\displaystyle \Omega }$ is the volume of the domain,
• ${\displaystyle m^{(k)}}$ is the mass of atom k,
• ${\displaystyle u_{i}^{(k)}}$ is the ith component of the velocity of atom k,
• ${\displaystyle {\bar {u}}_{j}}$ is the jth component of the average velocity of atoms in the volume,
• ${\displaystyle x_{i}^{(k)}}$ is the ith component of the position of atom k, and
• ${\displaystyle f_{i}^{(k\ell )}}$ is the ith component of the force applied on atom ${\displaystyle k}$ by atom ${\displaystyle \ell }$.

At zero kelvin, all velocities are zero so we have

${\displaystyle \tau _{ij}={\frac {1}{2\Omega }}\sum _{k,\ell \in \Omega }(x_{i}^{(\ell )}-x_{i}^{(k)})f_{j}^{(k\ell )}}$.

This can be thought of as follows. The τ11 component of stress is the force in the x1-direction divided by the area of a plane perpendicular to that direction. Consider two adjacent volumes separated by such a plane. The 11-component of stress on that interface is the sum of all pairwise forces between atoms on the two sides.

In an isotropic system, at equilibrium the "instantaneous" atomic pressure is usually defined as

${\displaystyle {\mathcal {P}}_{at}=-{\frac {1}{3}}Tr(\tau ).}$

The pressure then is the ensemble average of the instantaneous pressure[1]

${\displaystyle P_{at}=\langle {\mathcal {P}}_{at}\rangle .}$

This pressure is the average pressure in the volume ${\displaystyle \Omega }$.

### Equivalent Definition

It's worth noting that some articles and textbook [2] use a slightly different but equivalent version of the equation

${\displaystyle \tau _{ij}={\frac {1}{\Omega }}\sum _{k\in \Omega }\left(-m^{(k)}(u_{i}^{(k)}-{\bar {u}}_{i})(u_{j}^{(k)}-{\bar {u}}_{j})-{\frac {1}{2}}\sum _{\ell \in \Omega }x_{i}^{(k\ell )}f_{j}^{(k\ell )}\right)}$

where ${\displaystyle x_{i}^{(k\ell )}}$ is the ith component of the vector oriented from the ${\displaystyle \ell }$th atoms to the kth calculated via the difference

${\displaystyle x_{i}^{k\ell }=x_{i}^{(k)}-x_{i}^{(\ell )}}$

Both equation being strictly equivalent, the definition of the vector can still lead to confusion.

## Inhomogeneous Systems

If the system is not homogeneous in a given volume the above (volume averaged) pressure is not a good measure for the pressure. In inhomogeneous systems the pressure depends on the position and orientation of the surface on which the pressure acts. Therefore in inhomogeneous systems a definition of a local pressure is needed[3]. As a general example for a system with inhomogeneous pressure you can think of the pressure in the atmosphere of the earth which varies with height.