Title
Molecular conformation of n-alkanes using terrain/funneling methods
Document Type
Article
Date of Original Version
3-1-2009
Abstract
Understanding molecular conformation is a first step in understanding the waxing (or formation of crystals) of petroleum fuels. In this work, we study the molecular conformation of typical fuel oils modeled as pure n-alkanes. A multi-scale global optimization methodology based on terrain methods and funneling algorithms is used to find minimum energy molecular conformations of united atom n-alkane models for diesel, home heating, and residual fuel oils. The terrain method is used to gather average gradient and average Hessian matrix information at the small length scale while funneling is used to generate conformational changes at the large length scale that drive iterates to a global minimum on the potential energy surface. In addition, the funneling method uses a mixture of average and point-wise derivative information to produce a monotonically decreasing sequence of objective function values and to avoid getting trapped at local minima on the potential energy surface. Computational results clearly show that the calculated united atom molecular conformations are comprised of zigzag structure with considerable wrapping at the ends of the molecule and that planar zigzag conformations usually correspond to saddle points. Furthermore, the numerical results clearly demonstrate that our terrain/funneling approach is robust and fast. © 2007 Springer Science+Business Media LLC.
Publication Title, e.g., Journal
Journal of Global Optimization
Volume
43
Issue
2-3
Citation/Publisher Attribution
Gattupalli, Rajeswar R., and Angelo Lucia. "Molecular conformation of n-alkanes using terrain/funneling methods." Journal of Global Optimization 43, 2-3 (2009): 429-444. doi: 10.1007/s10898-007-9206-5.