In: Mechanical Engineering
Why do amorphous solids have high strength and low ductility?
amorphous solids have high tensile strength but low ductility and have brittle fracture at low temperatures . Amorphous solid do not exhibit rigidity. Deformation could be done by bending or compressing them. that is why they break easily.
these materials have covalent and ionic bond , they do not show plastic behaviour , so when you see the stress strain curve of amorphous solids , the breaking point and ultimate tensile stress occur immediately after the elastic limit end. So they do not have any plastic region, therefore failure occurs just after elastic limit is reached. Hence the low ductility of the amorphous solids. And amorphous metals have this property because of their amorphous nature. But the elastic limit is high so that they have high strength under tension.