Evolution of mechanical anisotropy in nano-scale metallic-glass thin films under indentation

YC Wang and CY Wu, 37TH NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THEORETICAL AND APPLIED MECHANICS (37TH NCTAM 2013) & THE 1ST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MECHANICS (1ST ICM), 79, 575-578 (2014).

DOI: 10.1016/j.proeng.2014.06.381

The mechanical behavior of Cu-Zr-Al metallic-glass thin films under indentation was studied with the molecular dynamics simulation methodology to investigate changes of microstructures through degrees of elastic anisotropy. In this work, the (Cu(50)Zr(5)0)(100-x)Al-x, where x is measured by atomic percentage, was studied by molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. Our metallic-glass models were first sputter-deposited on crystalline substrate byMDwith consideration argon working gas. The interaction between argon working gas and metallic atoms was modeled by the pair-wise Moliere potential. The as-deposited films were amorphous after equilibration, and their mechanical properties were characterized by ultra-nano-indentation simulations by MD with a right-angle diamond conical indenter tip, as well as a strain perturbation method to identify full elastic constants under the tip. Through region-byregion probes of the elastic properties of the film after being indented, it is found that local elastic anisotropy changes in relation to locations and penetration depth. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.

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