Atomic scale level chip formation of amorphous metal investigated by using afm and MD-RPFEM simulation

Abstract A cutting device has been developed by utilizing the scanning system of atomic force microscope (AFM) in machining, which aims at clarifying the ultimately small size removal as well as observing them in high resolution. As an application of the proposed method, the micro-chip deformation is investigated by cutting an amorphous metal Fe78B13Si9. It is shown that a lamellar structure, which is formed due to the localized shear occurred in a very narrow region and at very high strain rate, appears even at nanometer scale cutting. The simulation of this process using combined molecular dynamics (MD) and rigid-plastic finite element method (RPFEM) is also presented in this paper. The simulation shows that the localized shear would occur at the atomic scale by the cooperative group-movement of atoms. The high kinetic state of atoms would play a role of advancing this process for causing such localized shear.