Local atomic environment and shear banding in metallic glasses

M Tercini and RGD Veiga and A Zuniga, COMPUTATIONAL MATERIALS SCIENCE, 155, 129-135 (2018).

DOI: 10.1016/j.commatsci.2018.08.025

In this work we studied the compression behavior of a Cu45Zr45Al10 metallic glass and the relationship between the local atomic environment and shear banding using molecular dynamics. The Cu45Zr45Al10 metallic glass was first produced using the quenching technique and then deformed in compression for up to 20% at a strain rate of 10(8) s(-1). Both the compression stress-strain curve and analysis of the local shear strain show that shear banding is initiated at approximately 5%, while Voronoi analyses indicate that the most significant structural change as a function of compression strain is a decrease in the amount of Cu- centered < 0, 0, 12, 0, 0 > icosahedra. Additionally, we propose a novel quantitative tool for characterizing the local atomic environment in the metallic glass: the local density of atoms that satisfy a given condition. By using this tool for three different conditions we observed a strong spatial correlation between shear banding and the distribution of distorted Cu-centered < 0, 0, 12, 0, 0 > icosahedra.

Return to Publications page