Investigation on applicability of various stress definitions in atomistic simulation

How to correctly extract Cauchy stress from the atomistic simulations is a crucial issue in studying the mechanical behaviours of atomic systems, but is still in controversy. In this paper, three typical atomistic simulation examples are used to validate various existing stress definitions. It is found that the classical virial stress fails in predicting the stresses in these examples, because the velocity depends on the choice of the local average volume or the reference frame velocity and other factors. In contrast, the Lagrangian cross-section stress and Lagrangian virial stress are validated by these examples, and the instantaneous Lagrangian atomic stress definition is also proposed for dynamical problems.