Gas-phase properties and forces in Van der Waals molecules

The application of inversion methods developed to elucidate the intermolecular forces of spherically symmetric molecules to anisotropic interactions is investigated. It is found that the inversion procedures can be used to extract an effective, temperature independent, potential-energy function which can accurately reproduce both second virial coefficient data and gas-phase transport properties (calculated by the Monchick–Mason method). The nature of the averaging processes that may lead to such an effective potential is examined.