Scientific Events

Speaker: Prof. Yannick Champion

Nanoindentation for Investigating Dynamics of Shear Bands in Metallic Glasses

MPIE Colloquium
Deformation in metallic glasses occurs by initiation and propagation of multiple thin shear bands. This mode is rather difficult to analyse since generally, a single band soon propagates to a large extent in the specimen leading to a catastrophic failure. Exceptions are for example in creep tests under very low stress and moderate temperature or in confined deformation tests. We used instrumented nano-indentations to perform series of independent experiments at room temperature on a Mg65Cu12.5Ni12.5(Ce75La25)10 metallic glass. Loading part of the curves shows serrations which size and duration were measured using an automatic procedure. To make analyses consistent, data were considered only in the domain with similar strain rates, in the range of 1 to 0.3 s-1. Times between successive serrations follow a normal distribution characterizing a random occurrence of deformation burst in the glass. It was then conjectured, first that serration occurs through activation of appropriate zone in the glass that should naturally scale with a multiple of an elementary domain size characterizing the deformation mechanism. Second, as activated zones leading to serration are very few in the glass, the model should be described by the Poisson statistics. Data analyses reveals that serration size are well fitted by a Poisson distribution. The model predict an elementary size which scale with that of the activation volume of 3 atoms, measured from creep test at constant load in the same series of experiments. Eventually, energy dissipated during serration is analyzed as to define shear bands dynamics characteristics.Depending on time, I shall present the use of nano-indention for investigating dynamics of nanoporous metallic materials deformation. N. Thurieau, L. Perriere, M. Laurent-Brocq, Y. Champion, J. Appl. Phys., 118 (2015) 204302. [more]
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