A failure model for bulk metallic glass based on strain rate-correlated softening mechanism

Due to the amorphous nature of the bulk metallic glasses (BMGs), catastrophic fractures occur once the nucleation and propagation of shear bands occur, which is quite different from crystal materials. So far, the underlying mechanism of BMG failure behavior and its strain rate effect are still controversial. In this work, the quasi-static and dynamic compression experiments of Vit-1 BMG were carried out in a wide range of strain rates from 0.001 s⁻¹ to 5000 s⁻¹. The results show that the variation tendency of failure stress with strain rate can be divided into three stages. The quasi-static failure stress is insensitive to the change of strain rate with only almost constant free volume softening effect inside the material during the failure process. When entering dynamic loading stage, the failure stress decreases significantly, which is caused by a combination of increasing thermal softening and free volume softening effects. When the strain rate increases to the third stage, that is, over 2000 s⁻¹, the failure stress and the softening effects basically remain unchanged. The transformation of failure mechanism is well confirmed by the micromorphology of fracture surfaces. Based on the experimental results, a concise empirical failure model is established, in which the failure stress is decomposed into softening and non-softening parts. The verification experiments show that the model can effectively predict the compression failure stress of BMG under different strain rates.