Fracture toughness of metallic glasses: Annealing-induced embrittlement

Chris H. Rycroft, Eran Bouchbinder

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Quantitative understanding of the fracture toughness of metallic glasses, including the associated ductile-to-brittle (embrittlement) transitions, is not yet available. Here, we use a simple model of plastic deformation in glasses, coupled to an advanced Eulerian level set formulation for solving complex free-boundary problems, to calculate the fracture toughness of metallic glasses as a function of the degree of structural relaxation corresponding to different annealing times near the glass temperature. Our main result indicates the existence of an elastoplastic crack tip instability for sufficiently relaxed glasses, resulting in a marked drop in the toughness, which we interpret as annealing-induced embrittlement transition similar to experimental observations.

Original languageEnglish
Article number194301
JournalPhysical review letters
Volume109
Issue number19
DOIs
StatePublished - 7 Nov 2012

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General Physics and Astronomy

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