Although fatigue failure is well documented in metallic glasses, the mechanism responsible for damage accumulation during cyclic loading below the yield point remains elusive. This letter describes a high-resolution nanomechanical study of an Fe-based bulk metallic glass subjected to cyclic loading in the nominal elastic range. An increase in the yield load was observed with an increasing number of subyield loading cycles, providing a clean documentation of kinematic irreversibility in very small volumes of material that experience no shear bands either prior to or during cyclic loading.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.