Abstract
In this article, we report expressions for the excluded volume, v ex and second virial coefficient, B 2, of hard cylinders as a function of their aspect ratio (𝒜 = L/D), where L and D are the length and diameter of the cylinder, respectively. These expressions are valid for aspect ratio values within the interval 0.001 < 𝒜 < 100, that covers from thin plates to long rods and reproduce Monte Carlo (MC) simulation values. We compare these results with Onsager's predictions and with reported values of hard bodies of similar geometry, as cut spheres (CS), hard spherocylinders (HSC) and linear tangent hard sphere chains (LTHSC). Simulation values for v ex were obtained with an overlap algorithm that is also presented in detail. The obtained results can be applied in theoretical and computer simulation studies of discotic liquid crystals.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported under CONACYT grants 2002-C01-41678 and 2003-C03-42439/A-1.N. Ibarra-Avalos acknowledges a PhD scholarship from CONACYT and CONCYTEG, Mexico.