On thermophysical and mechanical properties of glass-forming alloys

This contribution reviews the relationships between thermophysical properties of glass-forming alloys: glass transition, specific heat, entropy of fusion, fragility indexes, using recent models for ranking undercooled liquids and glasses. These rely on both empirical correlations and on the description of local minima in potential energy landscapes of the material. Then, the relationships between mechanical properties and some of the above quantities are considered and discussed with the aim of getting insight into the mechanism of shear band propagation during mechanical failure when, following up a shear offset event, a local temperature rise occurs and the shear band matures to give a runaway crack. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.