Serrated flow and stick–slip deformation dynamics in the presence of shear-band interactions for a Zr-based metallic glass

In this paper, shear-band interactions (SBIs) were introduced by a simple method and their effect on the dynamics of shear bands and serrated flow was studied for a Zr-based metallic glass. Statistical analysis on serrations shows that the stick–slip dynamics of interacting shear bands is a complex, scale-free process, in which shear bands are highly correlated. Both the stress drop magnitude and the incubation time for serrations follow a power-law distribution, presenting a sharp contrast to the randomly generated, uncorrelated serrated flow events in the absence of SBIs. Observations on the fracture morphologies provide further evidence and insights into the deformation dynamics dominated by SBIs. A stick–slip model for multiple shear bands with interactions is also proposed and numerically calculated. The results, in good agreement with the experimental results, quantitatively show how multiple shear bands operate and correlate, especially for those with large serrated flow events. Our studies suggest that one serration in the stress–strain curve may correspond to collective stick–slip motions of multiple shear bands for those ductile bulk metallic glasses where a large number of shear bands are observed during deformation.