Fast Electrostatic Force and Moment Calculations in Multibody-Based Simulations of Coarse-Grained Biopolymers

In molecular simulations, the dominant portion of the computational cost is associated with force field calculations. Herein, we extend the approach used to approximate long range gravitational force and the associated moment in spacecraft dynamics to the coulomb forces present in coarse grained biopolymer simulations. We approximate the resultant force and moment for long-range particle-body and body-body interactions due to the electrostatic force field. The resultant moment approximated here is due to the fact that the net force does not necessarily act through the center of mass of the body (pseudoatom). This moment is considered in multibody-based coarse grain simulations while neglected in bead models which use particle dynamics to address the dynamics of the system. A novel binary divide and conquer algorithm (BDCA) is presented to implement the force field approximation. The proposed algorithm is implemented by considering each rigid/flexible domain as a node of the leaf level of the binary tree. This substructuring strategy is well suited to coarse grain simulations of chain biopolymers using an articulated multibody approach.