Research on deformation behavior of zirconium-based bulk metallic glasses containing hydrogen with different deformability

• Deformation behavior of zirconium-based bulk metallic glasses containing hydrogen was investigated.
• Highly localized shearing and resultant strain softening are responsible for the low deformability.
• Formation of shear bands reduces the stress concentration and hardening effect.

Bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) have absorbed much attention for their potential applications as high-strength materials. However, they are notorious for being extremely brittle, failing in a catastrophic manner. A large number of researches indicated that, BMGs deform through the formation of highly localized shear bands under loading at room temperature, i.e., deformation of the BMGs take places just within very narrow shear bands. However, whether or not all the BMGs, including BMGs with high global deformability and poor plasticity, have the same deformation manner at room temperature is not very clear. In present paper, two Zr-based BMGs, marked by T1 and T2, were prepared via copper-mold vacuum suction casting under the gaseous mixture of hydrogen and argon, of which, T2 presents a large plasticity at room temperature, while T1 is prone to brittleness. The uniaxial compression experiments of T1 and T2 BMGs were carried out under a quasistatic condition to investigate the deformation manners of BMGs with different deformability at room temperature. The results showed that the differences of initiation and propagation of shear bands result in the different deformation behavior of T1 and T2 BMGs at room temperature.