Second virial coefficient and mechanical moduli of metallic glasses

The relationship between the bulk, shear moduli and second virial coefficient of amorphous materials is derived according to their dependences with the radial distribution function. Lennard-Jones–Gaussian potential is used to investigate the relationship between second virial coefficient and temperature, where Lennard-Jones potential represents interactions with the nearest neighbor atoms, and Gaussian potential is responsible for the multi-atom interactions including the next nearest neighbor atoms and heterogeneous structures for a metallic glass. The results show that deep potential well formed by Gaussian potential causes a large second virial coefficient at low temperatures, which is very obvious for the larger fragility glasses. The quadratic form relationship of shear modulus and compositions is proposed, and confirmed by the experimental results of PdxNi100−x−20P20 alloy.