Department of

Metallurgical and Materials

Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology
Patna

Indentation and deformation behaviour of

FeCo-based bulk metallic glass alloys

Presented By :
Faique Shakil
Rahul Verma
Shivansh Mishra

Metallurgical and Materials Engineering 1 of 22

Metallurgical and Materials Engineering 2 of 22
Contents:
1. Introduction

2. Materials and methods

3. Results

4. Discussions

5. Conclusion

Metallurgical and Materials Engineering 3 of 22

1. Introduction
What are Bulk Metallic Glass?

Amorphous
Metals

Brittle and Produced via

low ductility rapid cooling
BMGs

Corrosion Higher
and Wear tensile
resistant strength

Metallurgical and Materials Engineering 4 of 22

1. Introduction
Fe-Co based BMGs:
• Very high strength and useful magnetic properties

• Best for applications where high strength and hardness is required.

• Applications are like; prosthetics, electrical devices (cores, actuators, sensors etc.), casings,
jewelry and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)

• FeCo-based BMGs possess good strength and magnetic properties

• Hardening is caused in BMGs by Shear Band theory

• Shear bands can be observed around the hardness indent as semi circular slip

Metallurgical and Materials Engineering 5 of 22

2. Materials and methods
• Alloy buttons of nominal compositions (Fe0.5Co0.5)69-

x Nb6B25+x (x=0, 2, 4) were prepared by arc melting of

Fe (99.99%), Nb (99.99), B (499%), and Co (99.99%)
elements in a small controlled atmosphere arc
furnace.

• Bulk metallic glass was cast by copper mold suction

casting technique in the form of strips that were 1
mm thick, 5 mm wide and ~20 mm long. A
schematic diagram of the suction casting technique
is shown in Fig. 1.

Metallurgical and Materials Engineering 6 of 22

2. Materials and methods
Sample Preparations:
• The samples were tested in as-cast, annealed and partially crystalline conditions. Bulk metallic
glass (BMG) alloys with x=0, 2, 4 will be referred to as A1, A2, A3 respectively.
• A2 - Annealing was per-formed in high vacuum for 30 min at 723 K which is below the glass
transition temperatures of these BMG alloys.
• A3 - Partial crystallization was achieved by heat treating the samples in high vacuum for 1 min at
their crystallization start temperatures (Tx1) that were measured through differential scanning
calorimetry.
• The crystallization temperatures were 853 K, 863 K, and 903 K respectively.
• Vickers hardness was measured using a Tu-kon micro hardness tester of Wilson Instruments
with a load time of 20 s.

Metallurgical and Materials Engineering 7 of 22

3. Results
• No peak is present in the XRD scans of the as-
cast and annealed samples thus confirming the
amorphous nature of the structure.

• In the partially crystalline samples, the scans

are not changed enough except a small peak of
α-FeCo solid solution that confirms the
presence of crystalline areas in the samples Fig.
2.

Metallurgical and Materials Engineering 8 of 22

3. Results
• Fig. 3 shows the DSC scans of the three alloys
in the as-cast condition.

• Peaks in the scans re-present the crystallization

events that are marked as 1, 2, 3 etc.

• Crystallization at higher temperatures, marked

as 2, 3 and 4 relate to the formation of various
borides.

• A change in slope of the curve before

crystallization marks the glass transition
temperature of the amorphous alloy.

Metallurgical and Materials Engineering 9 of 22

3. Results
The glass transition and crystallization temperatures of these as-cast amorphous
alloys are given in Table 1.

Metallurgical and Materials Engineering 10 of 22

3. Results
• In Fig. 4(a) a hardness indent has been shown in which
material from the edges of the hardness indent is displaced
upwards and can be seen as pileups in discrete steps due to
inhomogeneous deformation of the elastic-perfectly plastic
solid

• These bands are a common feature in BMGs but may not be

present around all the indents as shown in the Fig. 4(b)

• Shear bands also intersect other shear bands and it seems that
their radii are smaller than the radii of the bands these are
intersecting. This type of intersection is shown in Fig. 4(a).

Metallurgical and Materials Engineering 11 of 22

3. Results
• In partially crystalline alloys, cracks emanate from the
corners of the indent as shown in Fig. 4(c). Formation of
micro cracks clearly indicates a decrease in fracture
toughness of the alloy on partial crystallization.

• Plots of Vickers hardness values of the BMG alloys at

different loads in different conditions are shown in Fig. 5.

• The as-cast as well as annealed BMG samples have shown an

increase in hard- ness with an increase in load initially.

Metallurgical and Materials Engineering 12 of 22

3. Results
• The semi-circular cracks appeared at loads higher than 0.5 kg and 0.6 Kg for partially crystalline
alloys A1 and A2 respectively as shown in Fig. 5.
• In partially crystalline alloy A2, the hardness remained above those of the same alloy in
annealed condition even after the decrease.

Metallurgical and Materials Engineering 13 of 22

3. Results
• One with semi-circular shear bands is the plastic
deformation zone while a small portion just under
the indenter tip is the elastic zone that does not
contain any shear bands in Fig 5.

Metallurgical and Materials Engineering 14 of 22

3. Results
• Fig. 8 illustrates the deformation region beneath the hardness indent for the as-cast samples.
• In the annealed BMG alloys, as shown in Fig. 8, more radial shear bands are present as
compared to the as-cast BMG alloys.

Fig. 8. Deformation zone produced in BMG alloys beneath the hardness indent by
bonded. interface technique in the as-cast condition. a, b and c

Metallurgical and Materials Engineering 15 of 22

3. Results

(d), (e), (f) is A2 loaded with 200 g, 500 g and 1000 g respectively.

Metallurgical and Materials Engineering 16 of 22

3. Results

(g), (h), (i) is A3 loaded with 200 g, 500 g and 1000 g respectively.

Metallurgical and Materials Engineering 17 of 22

4. Discussions
• There is an increase in the hardness of the BMG alloys by increasing the boron content.
• The harder structure is expected to have a higher glass transition temperature (Tg)
• The decrease in hardness to lower levels in A1 is due to excessive cracking as shown in Fig. 6 that
happened at loads higher than 4.9 N.
• Hardness in metallic materials can be related to yield strength through the relation
H = C σy
• H is hardness in MPa, sy is compressive yield strength in MPa, and C is a constraint factor that
depends upon the nature of the material.
• A constraint factor (C) value of 2.5 has been used for the calculation.
• The number of secondary shear bands seems to in- crease with increasing deformation load and
annealing treatment.
• The Young’s modulus of the BMG alloys increases with an increase in temperature. There is a sharp
decrease in the Young’s modulus after Tg in the super cooled liquid region .

Metallurgical and Materials Engineering 18 of 22

4. Discussions
• Modified expanding cavity model proposed for the estimation of the size of the deformation
zone beneath the indent is given by the following relation

• R is the shear band zone size, HV is the Vickers hardness, E is the Young’s modulus, ν is the
Poison’s ratio, σy is the compression yield strength, P is the load and β is the included angle of
the Vickers indenter.
• Another relation for the estimation of the size of the de-formation zone based on the
deformation of single crystals is given as:

Metallurgical and Materials Engineering 19 of 22

4. Discussions
• Fig. 12 shows plots of the size of plastic
deformation zones at different loads. The
values of the size of the plastic deformation
zone are calculated by using Eq. 1, 2 & 3

• The value of ν is taken as 0.3 and σy is

calculated from hardness data. All of these
models have overestimated the size of the
shear band zone. This discrepancy is due to
high hardness and greater strength of these
alloys (C=2.5)

Metallurgical and Materials Engineering 20 of 22

5. Conclusion
1. Hardness of these alloys was found to increase with an increase of the B content, annealing and
partial crystallization treatment.

2. Partial crystallization resulted in the embrittlement of these alloys. Micro cracks and
fragmentation could be observed beneath the indents of the partially crystalline alloys.

3. The deformation zone underneath the Vickers indent was dominated by semi-circular shear
bands with the size of the zone increasing with an increase in the load.

4. Higher number of radial shear bands was present in the annealed BMG alloys as compared to
as-cast BMG alloys.

Metallurgical and Materials Engineering 21 of 22

 THANK YOU

Metallurgical and Materials Engineering 22 of 22