Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 1992
A scheme of developing ab initio many body potentials based on total energy calculations within density functional theory (DFT) is presented and demonstrated for transition metal alloys. An ab initio interatomic potential for Ni/Cr alloys is constructed with no input from experimental data. Molecular dynamics simulations have been performed to study thermal expansions. The coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) has been calculated over a wide range of temperature, and good agreement is obtained between theory and experiment.