Deformation and fracture of soda-lime-silica glass under tension by molecular dynamics simulation

Abstract

The deformation and fracture of a soda-lime-silica glass were investigated under tension by molecular dynamics simulation. The process of the deformation consisted of elastic deformation, flow, and expansion accompanied with flow in the order before the glass fractured. The main structural change on each deformation was the expansion of Si-O-(Al, Si) angle, change of network rings, and growth of cavity. The cavities were generated in the region where non-bridging oxygen ions clustered and grew up in the region where Ca ions clustered in addition to the clustered non-bridging oxygen ions. The fracture time became shorter and the fracture strain and volume decreased with increasing tension.

A Raman-spectroscopic study of indentation-induced structural changes in technical alkali-borosilicate glasses with varying silicate network connectivity

“…Two aspects influence this effect: firstly, the opening of the network structure due to the formation of NBOs, and secondly, the formation of a denser network due to incorporation of cations filling any voids. This was also shown by Taniguchi and Ito [76] by MD simulations up to pressures of 6 GPa: the network deformed under compression by both shear flow and densification. Shear flow was caused by breaking and recombination of Si\O bonds without changing the distribution of modifier cations, while densification was related to the reduction of the average Si\O\Si angle [76].…”

Modeling the effect of composition and thermal quenching on the fracture behavior of borosilicate glass

“…Cavities appear mainly in these zones in both of these glasses because it is energetically less favorable to create cavities in increasingly polymerized zones. This confirms what has been observed in complex glasses of different compositions [19].…”

“…Some zones could open more readily than others under the effect of external stresses. The formation of cavities ahead of the fracture front has already been demonstrated by simulating the cracking of silica glass or more complex glasses [8,19,20]. The complexity and diversity of the degrees of local disorder in a glass structure result in dispersion of local failure stresses and explain why a disordered structure is fractured by a different mechanism than a crystal structure of the same composition.…”

“…Although they are still limited to small dimensions and relatively short time spans, molecular modeling methods are capable of simulating the response of a glassy structure to the application of external shear or tensile stresses. These simulations were performed for pure silica glass and for more complex silica-based glasses containing alkalis or other network formers [19]. It was observed that silica and more complex silicate glasses were fractured by nucleation and coalescence of cavities.…”

Molecular dynamics simulation of amorphous silica under uniaxial tension: From bulk to nanowire

“…Classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulation has been extensively used to study the deformation and fracture behavior of bulk silicate glass [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] and amorphous silica nanowire [13][14][15]. However, a straightforward comparison between MD simulations and experiments is still not always possible due to the limited time scale (~μs) and length scale (~μm) accessible by the current computation power [16].…”