R. R. Valisetty¹, A.M. Dongare², A.M. Rajendran³, R. R. Namburu¹

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.36, No.3, pp. 231-255, 2013, DOI:10.3970/cmc.2013.036.231

Abstract Materials used in soldier protective structures, such as armor, vehicles and civil infrastructures, are being improved for performance in extreme dynamic environments. Nanocrystalline metals show significant promise in the design of these structures with superior strengths attributed to the dislocation-based and grain-boundary-based processes as compared to their polycrystalline counterparts. An optimization of these materials, however, requires a fundamental understanding of damage evolution at the atomic level. Accordingly, atomistic molecular dynamics simulations are performed using an embedded-atom method (EAM) potential on three nano-crystalline aluminum atom systems, one a Voronoi-based nano-crystalline system with an average grain size of 10 nm, and the… More >

A. M. Dongare^1,2, A. M. Rajendran³, B. LaMattina⁴, M. A. Zikry¹, D. W. Brenner¹

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.24, No.1, pp. 43-60, 2011, DOI:10.3970/cmc.2011.024.043

Abstract Large-scale molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are used to investigate the effects of microstructure and loading conditions on the dynamic failure behavior of nanocrystalline Cu. The nucleation, growth, and coalescence of voids is investigated for the nanocrystalline metal with average grain sizes ranging from 6 nm to 12 nm (inverse Hall-Petch regime) for conditions of uniaxial expansion at constant strain rates ranging from 4x107 s - 1 to 1010 s - 1. MD simulations suggest that the evolution of voids can be described in two stages: The first stage corresponds to the nucleation of voids and the fast linear initial growth… More >