A novel test-area (TA) technique for the direct simulation of the interfacial tension of systems
interacting through arbitrary intermolecular potentials is presented in this paper. The most
commonly used method invokes the mechanical relation for the interfacial tension in terms of
the tangential and normal components of the pressure tensor relative to the interface (the
relation of Kirkwood and Buff [J. Chem. Phys. 17, 338 (1949)]). For particles interacting
through discontinuous intermolecular potentials (eg, hard-core fluids) this involves the …