No Arabic abstract
We examine the atomistic scale dependence of materials resistance-to-failure by numerical simulations and analytical analysis in electrical analogs of brittle crystals. We show that fracture toughness depends on the lattice geometry in a way incompatible with Griffiths relationship between fracture and free surface energy. Its value finds its origin in the matching between the continuum displacement field at the engineering scale, and the discrete nature of solids at the atomic scale. The generic asymptotic form taken by this field near the crack tip provides a solution for this matching, and subsequently a way to predict toughness from the atomistic parameters with application to graphene.
The effect of substrate was studied using nanoindentation on thin films. Soft films on hard substrate showed more pile up than usual which was attributed to the dislocation pile up at the film substrate interface. The effect of tip blunting on the load depth and hardness plots of nanoindentation was shown. The experimental date of variation of Vickers hardness with film thickness and loads were fitted and new parameters were analyzed. The delaminated area was analyzed using geometrical shapes using optical view of the failure region along with the load displacement Indentation fracture using Nanoindentation using Berkovich indenter has been studied. Indentation fracture toughness (KR) was analyzed based on computational programs. The contact mechanics during nanoindentation was studied with parameters related to indenter shape and tip sharpness. Elastic, plastic and total energies were computationally determined. The energy difference was related to shear stress being generated with elastic to plastic transition. Change in the nature of residual stress was related to film thickness.
High-strain-rate shear tests were conducted on a three-layered bonded test piece comprising a central aluminum layer with PMMA resin layers bonded on both sides. Upon calculating the displacement field and the strain field using digital image correlation (DIC), the crack tip was located, and the fracture toughness was evaluated at the Aluminum/PMMA bonding interface. As a result of the DIC, it was possible to determine the process by which 1) the elastic stress wave propagated to the aluminum section, 2) the wave was transmitted to the PMMA section, and 3) the crack developed at the interface. The tip of the crack was identified using displacement distributions obtained using DIC. The fracture toughness of the interface was evaluated using the stress intensity factor. The true interfacial stress was calculated by correcting the strain value at the interface obtained using DIC. The distribution of the stress suggested that mode II fracture appears in the present test method when the crack is sufficiently shorter than the length of the bonding interface, and mode I and mode II fractures appear when the crack is longer in comparison. Although the value of the stress intensity factor was disturbed by the error of the DIC analysis, it was confirmed that the obtained values were similar regardless of the difference in the crack length, upon averaging the stress intensity factor values from the crack tips to the long-range with a ratio of 1 to the subset in DIC. As the obtained stress intensity factor value was similar to the values calculated in the related literature, it can be concluded that the method proposed in this study yields a reasonable stress intensity factor.
As the energy problem becomes more prominent, researches on thermoelectric (TE) materials have deepened over the past few decades. Low thermal conductivity enables thermoelectric materials better thermal conversion performance. In this study, based on the first principles and phonon Boltzmann transport equation, we studied the thermal conductivities of single-layer WSe2 under several defect conditions using density functional theory (DFT) as implemented in the Vienna Ab-initio Simulation Package (VASP). The lattice thermal conductivities of WSe2 under six kinds of defect states, i.e., PS, SS-c, DS-s, SW-c, SS-e, and DS-d, are 66.1, 41.2, 39.4, 8.8, 42.1, and 38.4 W/(m2K), respectively at 300 K. Defect structures can reduce thermal conductivity up to 86.7% (SW-c) compared with perfect structure. The influences of defect content, type, location factors on thermal properties have been discussed in this research. By introducing atom defects, we can reduce and regulate the thermal property of WSe2, which should provide an interesting idea for other thermoelectric materials to gain a lower thermal conductivity.
By suitably adapting a recent approach [A. Laio and M. Parrinello, PNAS, 99, 12562 (2002)] we develop a powerful molecular dynamics method for the study of pressure-induced structural transformations. We use the edges of the simulation cell as collective variables. In the space of these variables we define a metadynamics that drives the system away from the local minimum towards a new crystal structure. In contrast to the Parrinello-Rahman method our approach shows no hysteresis and crystal structure transformations can occur at the equilibrium pressure. We illustrate the power of the method by studying the pressure-induced diamond to simple hexagonal phase transition in a model of silicon.
Synchrotron Laue microdiffraction and Digital Image Correlation measurements were coupled to track the elastic strain field (or stress field) and the total strain field near a general grain boundary in a bent bicrystal. A 316L stainless steel bicrystal was deformed in situ into the elasto-plastic regime with a four-point bending setup. The test was then simulated using finite elements with a crystal plasticity model comprising internal variables (dislocation densities on discrete slip systems). The predictions of the model have been compared with both the total strain field and the elastic strain field obtained experimentally. While activated slip systems and total strains are reasonably well predicted, elastic strains appear overestimated next to the grain boundary. This suggests that conventional crystal plasticity models need improvement to correctly model stresses at grain boundaries.