Over centuries, structural glasses have been deemed as a strong yet inherently 'brittle' material due to their lack of tensile ductility. However, here we report bulk metallic glasses exhibiting both a high strength of ~2 GPa and an unprecedented tensile elongation of 2-4% at room temperature. Our experiments have demonstrated that intense structural evolution can be triggered in theses glasses...

Metallic materials usually exhibit higher strength but lower ductility after being plastically deformed by conventional techniques such as rolling, drawing and extrusion. In contrast, nanostructured metals and alloys processed by severe plastic deformation (SPD) have demonstrated both high strength and high ductility. This extraordinary mechanical behavior is attributed to the unique nanostruct...

A functionally graded (FG) material system is employed to make fiber use more efficient in a fiber reinforced cement composite (FRCC). This preliminary study demonstrates beam elements that were functionally graded fiber reinforced cement composite (FGFRCC) with four layers, each with a different fiber volume ratio. Fiber volume ratio was graded in accordance with its potential contribution to ...

New hyaluronic acid-itaconic acid films were synthesized as potential materials with biomedical applications. In this work, we explored the homogeneous cross-linking reactions of hyaluronic acid using glutaraldehyde in the presence of itaconic acid and triacetin as plasticizers. Biomechanical properties were assessed in terms of stability by measuring swelling in aqueous environments, investiga...

Ti-Nb-based Gum Metals exhibit extraordinary superelasticity with ultralow elastic modulus, superior strength and ductility, and a peculiar dislocation-free deformation behavior, most of which challenge existing theories of crystal strength. Additionally, this kind of alloys actually displays even more anomalous mechanical properties, such as the non-linear superelastic behavior, accompanied by...

This paper discusses the use of fracture mechanics for the microstructure tailoring of a fiber reinforced Engineered Cementitious Composite (ECC) to achieve extreme tensile ductility at the composite scale. It demonstrates that fracture mechanics applied to control fracture phenomena at the micro and meso material scales can lead to suppression of fracture failure at the macro structural scale....

Flash processing is a new heat treatment process being developed to produce steel with relatively high strength and ductility. It involves rapidly heating steel sheet or strip to a temperature in the austenite range and quenching; the entire thermal cycle takes place within 15 seconds. The resulting microstructure is fine and difficult to resolve using standard metallographic techniques. In thi...

The control of interfaces in engineered nanostructured materials has met limited success compared with that which has evolved in natural materials, where hierarchical structures with distinct interfacial states are often found. Such interface control could mitigate common limitations of engineering nanomaterials. For example, nanostructured metals exhibit extremely high strength, but this benef...

High performance Mg-8.2Gd-3.8Y-1.0Zn-0.4Zr alloy with high strength and excellent ductility has been successfully developed by hot extrusion. The effect of plate-shaped long period stacking ordered (LPSO) phases and solute-segregated stacking faults (SFs) on the dynamically recrystallization (DRX) behavior was analyzed. The plate-shaped LPSO phases stimulate the DRX by particle stimulated nucle...

An effect of rolling temperature on the mechanical properties and microstructural evolution of an Al-Mg-Si alloy was studied. The material was rolled up to a true strain of ∼0.7 at three different temperatures viz; room temperature, liquid propanol and liquid nitrogen. The liquid nitrogen rolled sample exhibited superior properties with a yield and tensile strength of 332 MPa and 364 MPa, respe...