Stress Relaxation and the Relaxation Spectrum of Metallic Glasses

Abstract The anelastic stress relaxation is measured at room temperature on amorphous alloys of different chemical composition obtained by melt spinning. It is found that the load relaxation vs. time behavior depends considerably on the strain rate at which the samples are anelastically deformed at a fixed strain before the relaxation tests. It is suggested that it is possible, in principle, by performing stress relaxation tests after loading the specimens in a wide range of strain rates, to obtain indications of the activation energy spectrum for relaxation and of the dependence on the strain rate of the characteristic relaxation times of the shear processes (two level systems), responsible for anelasticity.