The prospects for mechanical ratcheting of bulk metallic glasses

The major mechanical shortcoming of metallic glasses is their limited ductility at room temperature. Monolithic metallic glasses sustain only a few percent plastic strain when subjected to uniaxial compression and essentially no plastic strain under tension. Here we describe a room temperature deformation process that may have the potential to overcome the limited ductility of monolithic metallic glasses and achieve large plastic strains. By subjecting a metallic glass sample to cyclic torsion, the glass is brought to the yield surface; the superposition of a small uniaxial stress (much smaller than the yield stress) should then produce increments in plastic strain along the tensile axis. This accumulation of strain during cyclic loading, commonly known as ratcheting, has been extensively investigated in stainless and carbon steel alloys, but has not been previously studied in metallic glasses. We have successfully demonstrated the application of this ratcheting technique of cyclic torsion with superimposed tension for polycrystalline Ti-6Al-4V. Our stability analyses indicate that the plastic deformation of materials exhibiting elastic-perfectly plastic constitutive behavior such as metallic glasses should be stable under cyclic torsion, however, results obtained thus far are inconclusive.