Effect of plastic deformation anisotropies on shock-induced phase transitions in metallic single crystals
Abstract
Most metals and alloys undergo plastic deformation at shear stresses and/or pressures in the Kbars regime. On the other hand, typical pressure-induced structural transitions, take place at much higher pressures, in the tens of GPa range. Surprisingly, there has not been to date, a systematic study on the role plastic deformation plays on the dynamics of defect-mediated phase transformations. The main purpose of this work was to investigate via atomistic simulations, the contribution of pre-existing defect densities on the kinetics of structural transformations under dynamic loading. We have carried out molecular dynamics simulations - including large-scale non-equilibrium molecular dynamics (NEMD), of defect-mediated phase transformations under shock and quasi-isentropic compression (QIC). An analytical embedded atom method (EAM) description is used to model a fcc-bcc phase transition (PT) boundary chosen to occur below or above the elastic-plastic threshold in order to model systems undergoing a PT with and without plasticity. As expected, for conditions in which plastic deformation precedes the phase transformation, the defect-mediated PT proceeds at faster rates than the corresponding defect-free ones. The bcc fraction growth rate can be correlated with a sharp decrease in the dislocation densities originally present in the parent phase.
Subject Area
Physics
Recommended Citation
Ghimire, Punam, "Effect of plastic deformation anisotropies on shock-induced phase transitions in metallic single crystals" (2015). ETD Collection for University of Texas, El Paso. AAI1591954.
https://scholarworks.utep.edu/dissertations/AAI1591954