Structural relaxation in amorphous materials under cyclic tension-compression loading

Abstract

The process of structural relaxation in disordered solids subjected to repeated tension-compression loading is studied using molecular dynamics simulations. The binary glass is prepared by rapid cooling well below the glass transition temperature and then periodically strained at constant volume. We find that the amorphous system is relocated to progressively lower potential energy states during hundreds of cycles, and the energy levels become deeper upon approaching critical strain amplitude from below. The decrease in potential energy is associated with collective nonaffine rearrangements of atoms, and their rescaled probability distribution becomes independent of the cycle number at sufficiently large time intervals. It is also shown that yielding during startup shear deformation occurs at larger values of the stress overshoot in samples that were cyclically loaded at higher strain amplitudes. These results might be useful for mechanical processing of amorphous alloys in order to reduce their energy and increase chemical resistivity and resistance to crystallization.

arXiv comment22 pages, 10 figures

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Cited by in corpus (7)

• Accelerated rejuvenation in metallic glasses subjected to elastostatic compression along alternating directions
• Accessing a broader range of energy states in metallic glasses by variable-amplitude oscillatory shear
• Alternating shear orientation during cyclic loading facilitates yielding in amorphous materials
• A delayed yielding transition in mechanically annealed binary glasses at finite temperature
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• Relaxation dynamics in amorphous alloys under asymmetric cyclic shear deformation
• Shear band healing in amorphous materials by small-amplitude oscillatory shear deformation