What Simulation can tell us about Deformation and Fracture in Amorphous Solids

While the basic atomistic processes that underlie deformation and brittle/ductile fracture are well understood in crystals, the same cannot be said for the corresponding processes in noncrystalline solids. Understanding these processes is of both practical and theoretical interest. Glasses and particularly glassy metals display a host of interesting phenomena including the spontaneous localization of shear, strong dependence of mechanical properties on processing conditions and transitions between brittle and ductile fracture. Particularly intriguing is the fact that many of these physical phenomena such as the brittle-ductile transition are analogous to observations in crystals although the microscopic mechanism must be quite different. This talk will discuss the insights into these phenomena that can be gained through computer simulation as well as some theoretical results that have arisen from these simulations. Recent results relating mechanical properties to the nature of the glass transition will also be discussed.