Letter abstract


Nature Materials 4, 33 - 36 (2004)
Published online: 19 December 2004 | doi:10.1038/nmat1266

Subject Categories: Metals and alloys | Glasses | Characterisation and analytical techniques

Measuring strain distributions in amorphous materials

Henning F. Poulsen1, John A. Wert1, Jörg Neuefeind2, Veijo Honkimäki3 & Mark Daymond4

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A number of properties of amorphous materials including fatigue, fracture and component performance are governed by the magnitude of strain fields around inhomogeneities such as inclusions, voids and cracks. At present, localized strain information is only available from surface probes such as optical or electron microscopy1, 2. This is unfortunate because surface and bulk characteristics in general differ. Hence, to a large extent, the assessment of strain distributions relies on untested models. Here we present a universal diffraction method for characterizing bulk stress and strain fields in amorphous materials and demonstrate its efficacy by work on a material of current interest in materials engineering: a bulk metallic glass3, 4, 5. The macroscopic response is shown to be less stiff than the atomic next-neighbour bonds because of structural rearrangements at the scale of 4–10 Å. The method is also applicable to composites comprising an amorphous matrix and crystalline inclusions.

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  1. Materials Research Department, Risø National Laboratory, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark
  2. SNS, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, PB 2008, MS 6474, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 37922, USA
  3. European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, BP 220, F-38043 Grenoble, France
  4. ISIS Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxfordshire OX11 0QX, UK

Correspondence to: Henning F. Poulsen1 e-mail: henning.friis.poulsen@risoe.dk

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