Studying the elastic properties of nanocrystalline copper using a model of randomly packed uniform grains

Abstract

We develop a new Voronoi protocol, which is a space tessellation method, to generate fully dense (containing no voids) nanocrystalline models of copper (Cu) with precise grain size control; we also perform uniaxial tensile tests using molecular dynamical (MD) simulations to measure the elastic moduli of the grain boundary and the grain interior components at 300 K. We find that the grain boundary deforms more locally compared with the grain core region under thermal vibrations and is elastically less stiff than the core component at finite temperature. The elastic modulus of the grain boundary is lower than 30% of that of the grain interior. Our results will aid in the development of more accurate continuum models of nanocrystalline metals.

7 pages, 10 figures, 1 table

References in corpus (3)

• Structure identification methods for atomistic simulations of crystalline materials
• Understanding the Frequency Distribution of Mechanically Stable Disk Packings
• Molecular dynamics modeling of self-diffusion along a triple junction

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Atomistic and mean-field estimates of effective stiffness tensor of nanocrystalline materials of hexagonal symmetry
• Atomistic and mean-field estimates of effective stiffness tensor of nanocrystalline materials of cubic symmetry
• Atomistic and mean-field estimates of effective stiffness tensor of nanocrystalline copper
• Size Effects on Mechanical Properties of Micro/Nano Structures
• Spatial distribution of local elastic moduli in nanocrystalline metals