Roles of nanoclusters in shear banding and plastic deformation of bulk metallic glasses
During the course of this research we published 33 papers in various physics/material journals. We select four representing papers in this report and their results are summarized as follows. I. To study shear banding process, it is pertinent to know the intrinsic shear strain rate within a propagating shear band. To this aim, we used nanoindentation technique to probe the mechanical response of a Au49Ag5.5Pd2.3Cu26.9Si16.3 bulk metallic glass in locality and found notable pop-in events associated with shear band emission. Using a free volume model and under the situation when temperature and stress/hardness are fixed result in an equation, which predicts that hardness serration caused by pop-in decreases exponentially with the strain rate. Our data are in good agreement with the prediction. The result also predicts that, when strain rate is higher than a critical strain rate of 1700 s^-1, there will be no hardness serration, thereby no pop-in. In other words, multiple shear bandings will take place and material will flow homogeneously. The critical strain rate of 1700 s^-1 can be treated as the intrinsic strain rate within a shear band. We subsequently carried out a simulation study and showed that, if the imposed strain rate was over , the shear band spacing would become so small that the entire sample would virtually behave like one major shear band. Using the datum strain rate =1700 s^-1 and based on a shear band nucleation model proposed by us, the size of a shear-band nucleus in Au-BMG was estimated to be 3 10^6 atoms, or a sphere of ~30 nm in diameter. II. Inspired by the peculiar result published in a Science article Super Plastic Bulk Metallic Glasses at Room Temperature, we synthesized the Zr-based bulk metallic glass with a composition identical to that in the paper (Zr64.13Cu15.75Ni10.12Al10) and, subsequently, tested in compression at the same slow strain rate (~10^-4 s^-1). We found that the dominant deformation mode is always single shear. The stress-strain curve exhibited serrated pattern in the plastic region, which conventionally has been attributed to individual shear band propagation. The scanning electron micrographs taken from the deformed sample surface revealed regularly spaced striations. Analysis indicates that the observed stress-strain serrations are intimately related to the striations on the shear surface, suggesting the serrations were actually caused slip-and-stick shear along the principal shear plane. We further use video camera to conduct in situ compression experiments to unambiguously confirm the one-to-one temporal and spatial correspondence between the intermittent sliding and flow serration. This preferential shear band formation along the principal shear plane is, in fact, a natural consequence of Mode II crack, independent of strain softening or hardening, usually claimed in the literature. III. Flow serration in compression of metallic glasses is caused by the formation and propagation of localized shear bands. These shear bands propagate at an extremely high speed, so high that a load cell and load frame were unable to capture the details of the dynamic event. To subdue this problem, we conducted uniaxial compression on Zr64.13Cu15.75Ni10.12Al10 bulk metallic glass using a high-speed camera to capture the sample image and also high-sensitivity strain gauges attached to the test samples to directly measure the strain. The displacement-time curves obtained from the test and a magnified version of the displacement burst reveals clearly a three-step (acceleration, steady-state, and deceleration) process during shear band propagation. The fastest propagating speed occurring at the steady state is calculated as 810^2's. This speed is about 1,000 times faster than the crosshead speed. This explains the gradual disappearance of flow serration at higher strain rates previously reported during compression of BMGs. IV. Shear banding is associated with a local viscosity drop, which may be associated with a temperature rise in the shear band or dynamic stability caused by excessive applied stress. Molecular dynamic simulations recently have shown that applied stress and temperature are equivalent and shear banding is essentially a stress-induced glass transition process. To validate this, we carried out a series compression tests on the binary Cu50Zr50 metallic glass in a temperature range below glass transition temperature where deformation mode was inhomogeneous (T = 0.40-0.65 Tg); the results are shown in the left figure below. The yield strength (onset of plastic flow) was found to decrease monotonically with the increase of test temperature. The strength-temperature relation for the binary glass, as well as several other metallic glass systems, can be well correlated. This result supports the proposed concept of stress-induced glass transition.
- Research Organization:
- University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG02-06ER46338
- OSTI ID:
- 1047044
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/ER?46338-4
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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