Twin emission and phase transformations in Zr crack tips

MARGARITA RUDA; DIANA FARKAS; GRACIELA BERTOLINO

Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

Conferencia; 11th International Conference on Advanced Materials, ICAM 2009; 2009

SBPMat

We present atomistic studies of the deformation mechanisms occurring in the crack tip region during low temperature fracture of hcp Zr. Static simulations of mode I fractures on different planes of Zr crystals were performed using empiric embedded atom (EAM) potentials. Depending on the crystal plane and the orientation of the crack on that plane, crack tips advance to different extents and present different tip blunting. Deformation twins appear on every case studied. When the simulation took place with the crack lying in a (0001) basal plane we found a martensitic hcp to bcc phase transformation near the crack tip.