The results shown in Figure were obtained for flexible surfactants with one headgroup particle and four tail particles. Starting with a random distribution, the surfactants assemble quite fast to some small micelles. Usually these initial micelles which are not spherical merge in almost cubic simulation boxes to one large spherical micelle. For simulations done in elongated boxes one will find two micelles. Because of the periodic boundary conditions at higher surfactant concentration, this micelles merge in one or two directions with itself and form either rodlike micelles or bilayers.
Figure shows the final aggregates from simulation started with different surfactant concentrations.
One finds that the volume per surfactant molecule is almost constant while the surface area per surfactant molecule is decreasing with increasing aggregate size. This agrees with the volume incompressibility of surfactants as observed in real systems. One can obtain similar results for semiflexible surfactants. In this case, the last steps of the assembly process is found to be slower. In summary, we have shown that this simplified model reproduces the selfassembly of surfactants into bilayers.