Macroscopic tensile plasticity of metallic glass matrix composites through gradient microstructures

Effectively improving the tensile plasticity of metallic glasses (MGs) becomes more and more important in order to promote their wide application in the structural engineering. In this contribution, numerical designs were performed to explore the efficiency of gradient microstructure on the tensile plasticity of the resulting composites. The free volume theory was incorporated into the ABAQUS code via a user material subroutine UMAT, which is used to depict the shear banding evolution in the MGs. Ductile particles are dispersed in form of various gradient functions, and the composite samples were loaded under uniaxial tension. Numerical simulations demonstrated that some special gradient microstructures could effectively enhance the tensile plasticity of MGs. Based on this work, the derived conclusions are helpful in establishing the interaction between gradient morphology and mechanical behaviors, and will provide an alternative approach to design some novel MG matrix composites with special functions.