  We study vortex matter in layered superconductors in the limit of zero
Josephson coupling. The long range of the interaction between pancake vortices
in the c-direction allows us to employ a mean-field method: all attractive
inter-layer interactions are reduced to an effective substrate potential, which
pancakes experience in addition to the same-layer pancake repulsion. We perform
numerical simulations of this mean-field model using two independent numerical
implementations with different simulation methods (Monte-Carlo sampling and
Langevin molecular dynamics). The substrate potential is updated
self-consistently from the averaged pancake density. Depending on temperature,
this potential converges to a periodic profile (crystal) or vanishes (liquid).
We compute thermodynamic properties of the system, such as the melting line,
the instability line of the crystal, and the entropy jump across the melting
transition. The simulation results are in good agreement with approximate
analytical calculations.
