Probing the indentation induced nanoscale damage of rhenium

• Main Authors: Huaping Liu, Chao Xu, Chunmei Liu, Genchun He, Tian Yu, Ying Li
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2020-01-01
• Series: Materials & Design
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264127519308007

Although rhenium is recognized as an important refractory metal in extreme environment applications, its indentation induced damage and the corresponding plastic deformation mechanisms have rarely been reported. Through molecular dynamics simulations, we have investigated the indentations on the (0001), (0−110), and (2−1−10) planes of rhenium at nanoscale, and analyzed the corresponding plastic deformation mechanisms. Our results indicate that the incipient plasticity occurs first on the (0001) plane, then the (2−1−10) and (0−110) planes. The hardness in the (0001) plane is higher than that in (2−1−10) and (0−110) planes. The indentation imprints as well as the corresponding elasticity after unloading process were analyzed. Our results reveal that the dislocation nucleation and propagations dominate the indentation induced plastic deformation of rhenium. The pronounced anisotropy of dislocation propagations was evaluated. The anisotropies of the mechanical responses may result from the related anisotropy of dislocation propagations. In addition, we revealed the indentation responses of rhenium at high temperatures up to 2300 K, and the corresponding plastic deformation mechanisms were discussed. The results presented not only provide an answer for the questions about indentation responses of rhenium, but also offer insight into the plastic deformation mechanisms, which could provide reference data for its potential applications. Keywords: Indentation, Plastic deformation, Anisotropy, Rhenium