The validity of the potential model in predicting the structural, dynamical, thermodynamic properties of the unary and binary mixture of water-alcohol: Ethanol-water case

Abstract

Thermodynamic, dynamical, and structural properties of ethanol are numerically studied using two ethanol models: TraPPE-UA and OPLS-AA. These properties are computed with temperatures ranging from 200K to 300K, with steps of 10K, and also with different mole fractions of ethanol at 300K. The TraPPE-UA and OPLS-AA models are mixed with two water models: SPCE and TIP4P. These models have been previously shown to be the best models of methanol among nine different models. In our previous paper on methanol-water mixtures, the OPLS-AA model showed superiority over the TraPPE-UA model in predicting most properties. In this study, we show that the TraPPE-UA has better predictions in all computed properties when compared to the experimental results, except for the total structure factor of mixing with respect to the second maximum.