Micromechanical Modeling the Plastic Deformation of Particle-Reinforced Bulk Metallic Glass Composites

A micromechanics model was employed to investigate the mechanical performance of particle-reinforced bulk metallic glass (BMG) composites. The roles of shear banding in the tensile deformation are accounted for in characterizing the strength and ductility of ductile particle-filled BMGs. For the sake of simplicity and convenience, shear band was considered to be a micro-crack in the present model. The strain-based Weibull probability distribution function and percolation theory were applied to describe the equivalent micro-crack evolution, which results in the progressive failure of BMG composites. Based on the developed model, the influences of shear bands on the plastic deformation were discussed for various microstructures. The predictions were in fairly good agreement with the experimental data from the literatures, which confirms that the developed analytical model is able to successfully describe the mechanical properties, such as yield strength, strain hardening, and stress softening elongation of composites. The present results will shed some light on optimizing the microstructures in effectively improving the tensile ductility of BMG composites.