Determination of temperature-dependent Young's modulus of bulk metallic glass

Abstract

Bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) are fully amorphous multi-component alloys with homogeneous and isotropic structure down to the atomic scale. Some attractive attributes of BMGs include high strength and hardness as well as excellent corrosion and wear resistance. The research goal of this paper is to determine the mechanical properties at elevated temperatures. To accomplish this goal, we have used two methods in this paper to determine the Young's modulus of a BMGs, Zr41.2Ti13.8Cu12.5Ni10Be22.5 at elevated temperatures: sonic resonance method and nanoindentation. In the sonic resonance method, the system was designed using a laser displacement sensor to detect the sonic vibration produced by a speaker on the specimen in high-temperature furnace. The Young'ss modulus was found to reduce from 100 GPa (350°C) to 94 GPa (50°C). In the nanoindentation method, modulus was determined from the unloading curve and found to be in the same range as measurements from sonic resonance technique.