Stress gradient enhanced plasticity in a monolithic bulk metallic glass

A “stress gradient enhanced plasticity” concept has been proposed to alleviate the concern of catastrophic failure of BMGs. It was found that, with a standard orthogonal geometry the Zr-based BMG typically fractured catastrophically with a single dominate shear band. In great contrast, by slightly modifying the sample geometry while maintaining its aspect ratio of 2, the BMG did show a large displacement prior to failure with multiple shear bands consistently being observed. This strong geometry dependence of deformation behavior has been interpreted in terms of stress gradient, which largely constrained the nucleation and subsequent propagation of single shear band and encouraged the formation of multiple shear bands considering the high strength uniformity of BMG. These results present a new method on arresting the catastrophic failure of the glassy alloys and offer ways for BMGs in engineering applications.