2. Towards a better approach

2.1 Presentation

Two methods are currently proving highly effective for modeling solid solutions and phase equilibria at finite temperature. These are the Cluster Variation Method (CVM) and Monte Carlo techniques.

• In the Monte-Carlo method [18, 19, 20] , the possible configurations of a system are generated by simulation. At fixed temperatures and chemical potentials, atoms are exchanged with a reservoir of atoms with a probability that is defined in such a way that, after a sufficient number of atom exchanges, the equilibrium state of the system is reached. In a canonical set, with fixed temperature and compositions, atoms are exchanged two by two with a suitable probability....