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A combined experimental and computational analysis on how material interface mediates plastic flow in amorphous/crystalline composites

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  • Focus Issue: Multiscale Materials Modeling of Interface-mediated Thermomechanical Behavior
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Abstract

In this work, we study the deformation behavior in amorphous/crystalline metallic composites (A/C-MCs) through nanoindentation experiments and molecular dynamic (MD) simulations. The atomic deformation processes in both crystalline (C-) and amorphous (A-) phases near the amorphous-crystalline interface (ACI) are investigated and correlated with the material’s overall constitutive behavior at the microscale. Our major findings are (i) the ACIs enable a co-deformation of the A- and C-phases through “stiffening” the soft phases but “softening” the stiff phases in A/C-MCs through different micro-mechanisms; (ii) there exists an ACI-induced transition zone with a thickness of ~ 10 nm; (iii) the strong coupling between shear transformation zones (STZs) and dislocations can be quantified through carefully designed indentation experiments and simulations; and (iv) the nanoscale MD-simulation-predicted mechanisms can be mapped to the “pop-in” or “excursion” events on the force–indentation depth curves extracted from microscale experiments, although there is a length-scale gap in between.

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The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the support of the US National Science Foundation (NSF) with an award number of DMR-1807545 and the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE-TG-MSS170003 and XSEDE-TG-MSS190008). TP and LX also acknowledge the support of NSF under an award number of CMMI-1930093.

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  1. Department of Aerospace Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, 50011, USA

    Amir Abdelmawla, Thanh Phan, Liming Xiong & Ashraf Bastawros

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  1. Amir Abdelmawla
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Liming Xiong was an editor of this journal during the review and decision stage. For the JMR policy on review and publication of manuscripts authored by editors, please refer to http://www.mrs.org/editor-manuscripts/.

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Abdelmawla, A., Phan, T., Xiong, L. et al. A combined experimental and computational analysis on how material interface mediates plastic flow in amorphous/crystalline composites. Journal of Materials Research 36, 2816–2829 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1557/s43578-021-00269-4

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