Abstract
An equilibrium system of potentially interacting material points in a nonhomogeneous field is studied by numerical simulations, as well as criteria which are needed in order to switch from the quantified model to the thermodynamic one. This paper studies the system passing a potential barrier and factors which affect the change of the system’s internal energy. These factors include width of the barrier, number of material points in the system, as well as initial conditions. The dependence between change in fluctuations of energy parameters of the system and the number of material points is also shown. The amount of dynamic entropy is estimated. The paper also defines and describes two critical values (N1 and N2). If the system includes more than N1 material points, then its dynamics becomes irreversible. If the number of material points is greater than N2, then thermodynamic model can be used. The results obtained by numerical simulations verified the theoretical conclusions. Key words: Nonlinearity, classical mechanics, energy, thermodynamics, Lagrange equations, non-holonomic constraints, irreversibility.