LAUSR

Abstract Extensive molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are performed on metal uranium, and the solid/liquid interfacial energy is calculated using two methods. The critical nucleation method (CNM) provided the magnitude of the solid/liquid interfacial energy by γ0 = 77.23 mJ/m2, which is in good agreement with the results from the capillary fluctuation method (CFM) by γ0 = 83.46 mJ/m2. Meanwhile, two anisotropy parameters of the solid/liquid interfacial energy are extracted from CFM, the results are e1 = 2.74% and e2 = 0.15%. The interfacial energies calculated by two methods also agree well with the existing prediction by Turnbull’s empirical formula, which gives γ0 = 81.20 mJ/m2.