Atomistic modeling of plastic deformation in B2-FeAl/Al nanolayered composites

SJ Dong and XY Liu and CZ Zhou, JOURNAL OF MATERIALS SCIENCE, 56, 17080-17095 (2021).

DOI: 10.1007/s10853-021-06377-0

In this work, the deformation response of the B2-FeAl/Al intermetallic composites, as a model material system for nanolayered composites comprised of intermetallic interfaces, has been explored. We use atomistic simulations to study the deformation mechanisms and the interface misfit dislocation structure of B2-FeAl/Al nanolayered composites. It is shown that two sets of dislocations are contained in the interface misfit dislocation network and are correlated with the initial dislocation nucleation from the interfaces. The effects of layer thickness on the uniaxial deformation response of the B2-FeAl/Al multilayers are investigated. We observed that under compressive loading the smaller proportion of the FeAl layers leads to the lower overall flow stress. Under tensile loading, the void formation mechanism is investigated, suggesting the interface structure and the dislocation activities in the FeAl layers playing a significant role to trigger the strain localization which leads to void nucleation commencing at the interface. It is also found that the deformation behavior in the "weak" Fe/Cu interface behaves substantially different than that of the "strong" FeAl/Al interface. The atomistic modeling study of the nanolayered composites here underpinned the mechanical response of "strong" intermetallic interface material systems. There is no void nucleation during the entire plastic deformations in the Fe/Cu simulations, which is attributed to much higher dislocation density, more slip systems activated, and relative uniformly distributed dislocation traces in the Fe phase of the Fe/Cu multilayers.

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