Correlation between microstructure and internal friction in a Zr41.2–Ti13.8–Cu12.5–Ni8– Be22.5–Fe2 bulk metallic glass

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Abstract The microstructural evolution in a Zr–Ti–Cu–Ni–Be–Fe bulk metallic glass (BMG) has been investigated by measurements of dynamical shear modulus and internal friction combined with other analytical methods such as differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and high resolution transmission electron microscopy (TEM). When heated from room temperature up to 873 K, the as-received BMG exhibits an exponential increase in internal friction accompanying the strong decrease of storage modulus and the presence of the first loss modulus peak during the dynamic glass transition, which can be well described using quasi-point defect model. The correlative changes of the mechanical response at higher temperature are associated with the crystallisation process of the supercooled liquid phase, which occurs in four different stages. It is shown that the main crystallisation process is completed in the first two stages. With further increasing temperature, the remaining amorphous phases crystallise and/or the metastable crystalline phases are transformed into the stable ones. Isothermal annealing were also performed at temperatures in the supercooled liquid region far below the onset temperature of the crystallisation process ( T x ). Their influence on microstucture and internal friction behaviour of the BMG is also presented in this paper. The most striking result is that the internal friction is very sensitive to the local atomic short range ordering induced by the preheating treatment.