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Updated: May 13, 2026

Methods of Ex Situ and In Situ Investigations of Structural Transformations: The Case of Crystallization of Metallic Glasses
Published on: June 7, 2018
Critical fictive temperature for plasticity in metallic glasses
Golden Kumar1, Pascal Neibecker, Yan Hui Liu
1Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas Tech University, Box 41021, 7th and Boston, Lubbock, Texas 79409, USA. golden.kumar@ttu.edu
Abstract:
A long-sought goal in metallic glasses is to impart ductility without conceding their strength and elastic limit. The rational design of tough metallic glasses, however, remains challenging because of the inability of existing theories to capture the correlation between plasticity, composition and processing for a wide range of glass-forming alloys. Here we propose a phenomenological criterion based on a critical fictive temperature, T(fc), which can rationalize the effect of composition, cooling rate and annealing on room-temperature plasticity of metallic glasses. Such criterion helps in understanding the widespread mechanical behaviour of metallic glasses and reveals alloy-specific preparation conditions to circumvent brittleness.
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To solve the problem, first, identify the known and unknown quantities. The initial length (L) of the bridge is 1275 m, the coefficient of linear expansion (α) for steel is 12 x 10-6/°C, and the change in temperature (ΔT) is 55 °C.

