ABSTRACT
The mechanical properties of materials play a very important role for applications and therefore their characterization has been of great importance and critical to the exploitation of materials in human civilization. Metallic materials are traditionally crystalline in nature and their mechanical behavior is determined essentially by the nature and density of dislocations, and their ability to move. The presence of dislocations in crystals has also been noted to be the reason for their low strength (compared to the theoretical value) and their plastic deformation behavior. Since metallic glasses are noncrystallinein nature, and therefore do not contain any dislocations, they are expected to exhibit high theoretical strength, but not ductility.
