Modeling microstructural effects of deformation resistance and thermal conductivity

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Nuclear Engineering, 2000.

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Li, Ju
Other Authors: Sidney Yip.
Format: Thesis
Language:eng
Published: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2009
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/46283
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author Li, Ju
author2 Sidney Yip.
author_facet Sidney Yip.
Li, Ju
author_sort Li, Ju
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description Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Nuclear Engineering, 2000.
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spelling mit-1721.1/462832022-02-03T03:19:00Z Modeling microstructural effects of deformation resistance and thermal conductivity Li, Ju Sidney Yip. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Nuclear Engineering. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering Nuclear Engineering. Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Nuclear Engineering, 2000. Includes bibliographical references (p. 344-360). This is a study of the microstructural influences on thermo-mechanical behavior of selected metals and ceramics using computer simulation, with original contributions in both theoretical and applied aspects. There are three major thrusts. First, by constructing a many-body empirical potential for ZrCx and then carrying out MD simulations to calculate its lattice thermal conductivity, I obtain the first quantitative evidence ever that the vibrational contribution is only a small part of the total thermal conductivity of refractory carbides at realistic carbon vacancy concentrations. This is a long-standing problem which even the most recent review article on the subject give what I now believe is the wrong estimate. Second, ideal strengths are calculated for Ar,Cu,SiC crystals using both lattice and molecular dynamics methods. A set of homogeneous instability criteria are derived. Tension tests are performed on amorphous and nanocrystalline SiC at room temperature, based on which a grain size cutoff of ~20 nm is extrapolated for the Hall-Petch effect. Nano-indentation is performed on single-crystal and nanocrystalline Cu, and bursts of dislocation loops is observed at a local stress level consistent with recent experiments on Cu thin films. Third, an invariant loop summation similar to the J-integral is derived for the driving force on defect motion, but with the loop size now down to nanometers, and the summation now expressed in terms of interatomic forces instead of stress, a field concept which is hard to use in atomistic calculations and becomes ill-defined when defect separations approach the nanometer scale. It is shown first that the change in a system's total Helmholtz free energy due to a defect's move can be approximated by a local quantity involving only scores of atoms immediately surrounding the defect. Then, perturbation expansion is used to evaluate this local invariant for defect translation using only the current configuration. This driving force measure is then tested on a) self-interstitial diffusion near free surface in [alpha]-iron, b) crack-tip extension near a void in Si, c) screw dislocation translation in Si, with convincing results down to literally r = 1 nm, at a fraction of the cost of a full relaxation or free energy calculation for the whole system. This means that defect mobility can now be characterized by a universal and invariant standard, computable from a tiny atomistic calculation without relying on elasticity formulas or image summations. The standard is then used to determine the true Peierls-Nabarro stress in Si-like materials. by Ju Li. Ph.D. 2009-06-30T18:50:37Z 2009-06-30T18:50:37Z 2000 2000 Thesis http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/46283 48546309 eng M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission. http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582 360 p. application/pdf Massachusetts Institute of Technology
spellingShingle Nuclear Engineering.
Li, Ju
Modeling microstructural effects of deformation resistance and thermal conductivity
title Modeling microstructural effects of deformation resistance and thermal conductivity
title_full Modeling microstructural effects of deformation resistance and thermal conductivity
title_fullStr Modeling microstructural effects of deformation resistance and thermal conductivity
title_full_unstemmed Modeling microstructural effects of deformation resistance and thermal conductivity
title_short Modeling microstructural effects of deformation resistance and thermal conductivity
title_sort modeling microstructural effects of deformation resistance and thermal conductivity
topic Nuclear Engineering.
url http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/46283
work_keys_str_mv AT liju modelingmicrostructuraleffectsofdeformationresistanceandthermalconductivity