Molecular Dynamics Study on Mechanical and Rheological Properties of Bulk Metallic Glass around Glass Transition Temperature

Bulk Metallic Glasses (BMG) or amorphous alloys usually contain more than two kinds of atoms. These materials have been central in both material engineering and material physics ever since their first appearance in 1960s, and posses superior material properties (e.g. tensile yield stress). However, the mechanical properties of BMG are not well understood due to nonequilibrium nature of the glass transition, and dramatic slow-down of the dynamics around the glass transition temperature. Using large scale computational power, we investigated the mechanical properties of the celebrated Kob-Andersen mixture, a model BMG, using active microrheology in molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Moreover, we systematically compared results of the active microrheology with those obtained from global shearing. With strong evidence, we conclude superiority of the either method.