Fracture of metallic glasses at notches: Effects of notch-root radius and the ratio of the elastic shear modulus to the bulk modulus on toughness

摘要

The Anand-Su theory for large elastic-plastic deformations of metallic glasses is modified to account for the strongly nonlinear and eventually softening dilatational volumetric elastic response of these materials. Using this theory, we have conducted finite-element simulations of fracture initiation at notch tips in a representative metallic glass under Mode-I, plane-strain, small-scale-yielding conditions. We show that our theory predicts three important experimentally observed phenomena: (a) fracture initiates ahead of the notch root, where the mean normal stress reaches a maximum value; (b) the fracture toughness increases linearly with the square-root of the notch-tip radius; and (c) the fracture toughness decreases as the ratio of the elastic shear modulus to the bulk modulus increases.