Stress-Versus Temperature-Induced Structural Evolution In Metallic Glasses

Structure evolution induced by shear deformation was investigated via molecular dynamic simulation on CuZr metallic glass system and compared with that induced by temperature. Voronoi tessellation analysis found that the local structures evolve to a liquid-like state as shear stress increases, similar to the temperature-induced structure evolution. However, shear stress induces little change to the radial distribution functions (RDFs) compared to temperature, indicating that the global glassy state still sustains. This is in contrast to the opinion that shear deformation may be similar to temperature increase and induce a metallic glass system to experience glass-liquid transition. The analysis of anisotropic part of RDFs reveals that shear deformation can induce significant anisotropic structural evolution, while pure increase of temperature cannot. Our findings demonstrate that shear deformation may induce different structural evolution in metallic glasses compared to temperature. (C) 2013 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4800531]