Amorphous molecular glasses description

Horbach et al. [56] have employed the model developed by van Beest et al. [58]. This model gives a quite reasonable description of several properties of silica glass [59,60]. Horbach et al. [56] performed molecular dynamics simulations within the harmonic approximation to calculate the specific heat of amorphous silica. Their results are qualitatively in agreement with experimental values obtained by other authors [56]. They claim that the discrepancy with experimental results is in part due to size effects of the simulation box employed. A simpler model has been employed by Cascarini de Torre et al. [41]. To simulate the adsorption properties of amorphous silica the authors described the stmcture of the solid as a collection of randomly packed spheres, Bernal s model [61], representing the oxygen anions. 

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