Heat conduction in a confined solid strip: Response to external strain

TL;DR

This paper investigates how external strain affects heat conduction in a confined solid of hard disks, revealing sharp changes in heat current due to structural deformation and failure, supported by molecular dynamics simulations and a free-volume model.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed study of heat conduction response to strain in a confined solid, combining simulations with a simple theoretical model.

Findings

Heat current exhibits sharp changes at certain strains.

Structural deformation correlates with heat conduction variations.

The free-volume model qualitatively captures the strain dependence.

Abstract

We study heat conduction in a system of hard disks confined to a narrow two dimensional channel. The system is initially in a high density solid-like phase. We study, through nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations, the dependence of the heat current on an externally applied elongational strain. The strain leads to deformation and failure of the solid and we find that the changes in internal structure can lead to very sharp changes in the heat current. A simple free-volume type calculation of the heat current in a finite hard-disk system is proposed. This reproduces some qualitative features of the current-strain graph for small strains.