Shear of large single-crystal metals

Work with Mark Horstemeyer at Mississippi State (formerly at Sandia) and Mike Baskes at LANL to study stress/strain effects in large single-crystal metal samples. Simulations with up to 100 million atoms were run.

This image shows defect formation in a quasi-2d Ni sample undergoing fixed-end shear, where the z-dimension (into the image) is periodic but very thin. The black lines indicate atom displacements as the sample has sheared to the right. Related papers are collected in the Metals section of Steve Plimpton’s publication list.