Serrated Behaviors and Plasticity of Nb-Alloyed Cu-Based Bulk Metallic Glasses

This paper is to disclose the plastic deformation mechanism of 3 Nb-alloyed bulk metallic glasses and composites via the analysis of serration dynamics. The as-cast alloys with 1.0 at% and 2.0 at% of Nb element display the large time window of serrated events, implying that the serrated behavior can dynamically retain in a long-time scale and thus the alloys are endowed the largest compressive plasticity. The statistic results suggest that the serrated flow of both alloys with 1.0 at% and 2.0 at% Nb element achieves the self-organized critical state. The normal probability plots were utilized to further evaluate serrated dynamics and demonstrate that large deviations from the mean value of stress drops facilitate the self-organized critical state of serrations. This work suggests that large plastic bulk metallic glasses and composites are characterized by non-normal probability of serration statistics during plastic deformation.