EUROPEAN CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION ON ADVANCED MATERIALS AND PROCESSES - EUROMAT 2021

Metallic glasses lack of periodic atomic structure and thus they not have crystal lattices with glide planes on which mobile dislocation can cause plastic flow. As a result, they exhibit a wide elastic strain range of the order of ~2% before the onset of plastic deformation which occurs in a highly localized manner on planes of maximum shear stress. Their exceptional mechanical properties lead to a unique and reversible sinusoidal mechanical response of metallic glass foils that are elastically shaped to form an arc. Under a normal load applied on the top of the sinusoidal arc, the foil deforms elastically leading to the successive formation of sinusoidal wavy patterns of higher order. The non-linear load versus displacement response allows metallic glass foils to act as a non-conventional spring with variable equivalent spring constants at different ranges of applied load. This recently discovered mechanically induced undulatory behaviour of metallic glasses, resulting from their exceptional buckling response, offers new opportunities for exploring novel functionalities of metallic glasses in a wide range of applications including micro-springs, sensors and actuators, shock absorbance and energy harvesting.