arXiv subjects

Mahmudul Islam

Publications and source records attributed to Mahmudul Islam.

13 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Precipitation strengthening: a collective multi-dislocation phenomenon

Precipitation strengthening is a cornerstone of physical metallurgy, delivering otherwise unattainable combinations of strength and ductility. The approach relies on nanoscale precipitates that impede the motion of dislocations, the primary carriers of plastic deformation. Historically, precipitation strengthening has been rationalized via two idealized, limiting mechanisms: dislocations either cut through or bow around precipitates. However, in situ experiments cannot yet resolve the coupled, real-time evolution of dislocation networks and nanoprecipitates, leaving these atomic-scale dynamics inaccessible to direct observation. Here, using large-scale atomistic simulations that fully capture these dynamics, we demonstrate that the classical cutting-versus-bowing dichotomy is incomplete. Instead, strengthening arises as an emergent collective phenomenon driven by concurrent, multi-dislocation interactions. These interactions simultaneously induce dislocation accumulation at interfaces, storage within precipitates, and precipitate-mediated multiplication inside the matrix. These findings establish a mechanistic framework that transcends traditional models and provides a new foundation for predicting strengthening behavior.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2026

Detecting the Onset and Progression of Spinodal Decomposition using Transient Grating Spectroscopy

Spinodal decomposition can degrade corrosion resistance and embrittle materials. The ability to quickly, conclusively, and non-destructively detect the onset of spinodal decomposition before catastrophic materials degradation would represent a significant advance in materials testing. We demonstrate that spinodal decomposition can be detected in binary Fe-Cr alloys via modulus stiffening using in situ and ex situ transient grating spectroscopy (TGS). The key mechanistic insight is the non-linearity in elastic moduli as function of Cr content renders a spinodally decomposed Fe-Cr alloy stiffer than an equivalent solid solution for a certain range of initial chromium compositions. We confirm the presence of spinodal decomposition in the 36 at.% chromium alloy using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), linked to known spinodal decomposition energetics, and show via atomistic simulations that elastic modulus stiffening is expected after spinodal decomposition in the 36 at.% chromium alloy. The results of this study suggest the potential use of TGS as a practical tool for non-destructive evaluation of key materials susceptible to such degradation.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2025

Dislocation-mediated short-range order evolution during thermomechanical processing

Thermomechanical processing alters the microstructure of metallic alloys through coupled plastic deformation and thermal exposure, with dislocation motion driving plasticity and microstructural evolution. Our previous work (Islam et al., 2025) showed that the same dislocation motion both creates and destroys chemical short-range order (SRO), driving alloys into far-from-equilibrium SRO states. However, the connection between this dislocation-mediated SRO evolution and processing parameters remains largely unexplored. Here, we perform large-scale atomistic simulations of thermomechanical processing of equiatomic TiTaVW to determine how temperature and strain rate control SRO via competing creation ($\Gamma$) and annihilation ($\lambda$) rates. The simulations employ systems containing 2.4 million atoms and utilize a machine learning interatomic potential optimized to capture chemical complexity through the motif-based sampling technique. Using information-theoretic metrics, we quantify that the magnitude and chemical character of SRO vary systematically with processing parameters. We identify two regimes: a low-temperature regime with weak strain-rate sensitivity, and a high-temperature regime in which reduced dislocation density and increased screw character amplify chemical bias and accelerate SRO formation. The resulting steady-state SRO is far-from-equilibrium and cannot be produced by equilibrium thermal annealing. Together, these results provide a mechanistic and predictive link between processing parameters, dislocation physics, and SRO evolution in chemically complex alloys.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2024

Effect of Grain Size and Local Chemical Order on Creep Resistance in MoNbTaW Refractory High-Entropy Alloy: A Molecular Dynamics Study

Refractory high-entropy alloy (RHEA) is a promising class of materials with potential applications in extreme environments, where the dominant failure mode is thermal creep. The design of these alloys, therefore, requires an understanding of how their microstructure and local chemical distribution affect creep behavior. In this study, we performed high-fidelity atomistic simulations using machine-learning interatomic potentials to explore the creep deformation of MoNbTaW RHEA under a wide range of stress and temperature conditions. We parametrized grain size and local chemical order (LCO) to investigate the effects of these two important design variables, which can be controlled during the alloy fabrication process, on creep deformation process. Our investigation revealed that resistance to creep deformation is enhanced with larger grain size due to the reduced grain boundary area, which limits grain-boundary dominated deformation mechanisms such as Coble creep and grain boundary sliding. Introducing LCO in the microstructure has the same effect of increasing resistance to creep deformation by strengthening grain boundary. This study highlights the importance of utilizing LCO in conjunction with other microstructural properties when designing RHEAs for extreme environmental applications.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2024

Nonequilibrium chemical short-range order in metallic alloys

Metallic alloys are routinely subjected to nonequilibrium processes during manufacturing, such as rapid solidification and thermomechanical processing. It has been suggested in the high-entropy alloy literature that chemical short-range order (SRO) could offer a new knob to tailor materials properties. While evidence of the effect of SRO on materials properties accumulates, the state of SRO evolution during alloy manufacturing remains obscure. Here, we employ high-fidelity atomistic simulations to track SRO evolution during the solidification and thermomechanical processing of alloys. Our investigation reveals that alloy processing can lead to nonequilibrium steady-states of SRO that are different from any equilibrium state. The mechanism behind nonequilibrium SRO formation is shown to be an inherent ordering bias present in nonequilibrium events. These results demonstrate that conventional manufacturing processes provide pathways for tuning SRO that lead to a broad nonequilibrium spectrum of SRO states beyond the equilibrium design space of alloys.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2022

Understanding Mechanical Characteristics of FeNiCrCoCu HEA in Nanoscale Laser Powder Bed Fusion via Molecular Dynamics

The concept of alloying multiple principal elements at high concentrations has led to the development of High Entropy Alloys (HEAs) with exceptional mechanical properties, making them the focus of major recent scientific endeavors. Geometrically complex HEAs with tailored microstructural characteristics can be produced using additive manufacturing technologies such as powder bed fusion (PBF). However, an in-depth study on the effect of process thermal conditions during PBF is required to effectively fabricate HEAs with desirable mechanical characteristics. Thus, in our present molecular dynamic (MD) study we have explored the implication of PBF process thermal conditions on the mechanical characteristics of FeNiCrCoCu HEA by systematically varying laser scan speed from 0.4 {\AA}/ps to 0.1 {\AA}/ps, unidirectional and reversing laser passes from 1 to 4, and laser power from 100 microwatts to 220 microwatts. Our investigation suggests that reducing the laser scanning speed up to a critical velocity of 0.2 {\AA}/ps considerably improves mechanical strengths, with further reduction creating severe surface defects. Decreased ultimate tensile strength (UTS) is associated with the annihilation of the bulk sessile dislocations during tensile straining marking an early yield failure. Alternately, the material's strength could be improved by annealing with several unidirectional laser passes over the same target region, resulting in enhanced UTS due to subtler yield points. Increasing laser power aids in ameliorating material density ultimately leading to higher UTS even in non-dislocation-free structures. These findings will assist researchers to understand the underlying effects and optimize process thermal parameters to fabricate superior HEAs utilizing additive manufacturing.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2022

Effect of powder bed fusion process parameters on microstructural and mechanical properties of FeCrNi MEA: An atomistic study

In our study, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) have been conducted on equimolar FeNiCr medium entropy alloy (MEA) powders. With the development of newer LPBF technologies capable of printing at the microscale, an even deeper understanding of the underlying atomistic effects of the process parameters on the microstructural and mechanical properties of the manufactured FeNiCr MEA products is required. In accordance with previous literature, the parameters of the LPBF process have been systematically varied, including layer resolution from 1 to 6, laser power from 100 {\mu}W to 220 {\mu}W, bed temperature from 300 K to 1200 K, and laser scan speed from 0.5 {\AA}/ps to 0.0625 {\AA}/ps. Consistent with prior macroscopic experimental findings, the atomistic results suggest that additive manufacturing using thinner layers imparts higher ultimate tensile strength (UTS) than fabricating with thicker layers. The latter, however, requires a shorter process time but induces keyhole defect formation if the laser-induced temperature is not sufficiently high enough. Increasing the temperature proves useful in mitigating this problem. Enhancement of UTS for the multi-rowed powders has been observed by raising the substrate temperature to 600 K or laser power to 160 {\mu}W during production. Beyond these critical limits, however, the UTS of the product diminishes due to the emergence of multiple vacancies. The results of our present study will help researchers to find a good balance between the production speed and strength of additive manufactured products at the nanoscale.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2021

Comparative study on Mechanical characteristics of Functionally graded and Coreshell nanospheres: An Atomistic approach

Functionally Graded Material (FGM) is a type of advanced material consisting of two (or more) distinct substances with a constantly changing composition profile. FGM technologies have moved from their traditional use to advanced micro and nanoscale electronics and energy conversion systems along with the advent of nanotechnology. MD simulations are used in this analysis to examine the effect of compressive load on Ag-Au FGM and Core-shell nanospheres. The plasticity process is often started by the nucleation of partial dislocations from the contact surfaces, and these dislocations spread towards the nanosphere's center. Also, we have found the formation of pyramidal-shaped partial dislocations on the pseudo-plastic regime. For a given wt% range of Ag in Au, Coreshell nanospheres have stronger mechanical strength than FGM nanospheres, and we have also observed two distinct patterns in ultimate stress variation for FGM and Coreshell nanospheres. The dislocation analysis suggests a correlation between this stress variation and the Shockley & Hirth partial dislocation density.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2020

Mixed Convective Heat Transfer Enhancement in a Ventilated Cavity by Flow Modulation via Rotating Plate

The present study numerically explores the mixed convection phenomena in a differentially heated ventilated square cavity with active flow modulation via a rotating plate. Forced convection flow in the cavity is attained by maintaining an external fluid flow through an opening at the bottom of the left cavity wall while leaving it through another opening at the right cavity wall. A counter-clockwise rotating plate at the center of the cavity acts as active flow modulator. Moving mesh approach is used for the rotation of the plate and the numerical solution is achieved using Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) finite element formulation with a quadrilateral discretization scheme. Transient parametric simulations have been performed for various frequency of the rotating plate for a fixed Reynolds number (Re) of 100 based on maximum inlet flow velocity while the Richardson number (Ri) is maintained at unity. Heat transfer performance has been evaluated in terms of spatially averaged Nusselt number and time-averaged Nusselt number along the heated wall. Power spectrum analysis in the frequency domain obtained from the fast Fourier transform (FFT) analysis indicates that thermal frequency and plate frequency start to deviate from each other at higher values of velocity ratio (> 4).

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2020

Extraction of Material Properties through Multi-fidelity Deep Learning from Molecular Dynamics Simulation

Simulation of reasonable timescales for any long physical process using molecular dynamics (MD) is a major challenge in computational physics. In this study, we have implemented an approach based on multi-fidelity physics informed neural network (MPINN) to achieve long-range MD simulation results over a large sample space with significantly less computational cost. The fidelity of our present multi-fidelity study is based on the integration timestep size of MD simulations. While MD simulations with larger timestep produce results with lower level of accuracy, it can provide enough computationally cheap training data for MPINN to learn an accurate relationship between these low-fidelity results and high-fidelity MD results obtained using smaller simulation timestep. We have performed two benchmark studies, involving one and two component LJ systems, to determine the optimum percentage of high-fidelity training data required to achieve accurate results with high computational saving. The results show that important system properties such as system energy per atom, system pressure and diffusion coefficients can be determined with high accuracy while saving 68% computational costs. Finally, as a demonstration of the applicability of our present methodology in practical MD studies, we have studied the viscosity of argon-copper nanofluid and its variation with temperature and volume fraction by MD simulation using MPINN. Then we have compared them with numerous previous studies and theoretical models. Our results indicate that MPINN can predict accurate nanofluid viscosity at a wide range of sample space with significantly small number of MD simulations. Our present methodology is the first implementation of MPINN in conjunction with MD simulation for predicting nanoscale properties. This can pave pathways to investigate more complex engineering problems that demand long-range MD simulations.

physics.comp-ph↗

arXiv2020

Atomistic Modelling of Functionally Graded Cu-Ni Alloy and its Implication on the Mechanical Properties of Nanowires

Functionally graded materials (FGM) eliminate the stress singularity in the interface between two different materials and therefore have a wide range of applications in high temperature environments such as engines, nuclear reactors, spacecrafts etc. Therefore, it is essential to study the mechanical properties of different FGM materials. This paper aims at establishing a method for modelling FGMs in molecular dynamics (MD) to get a better insight of their mechanical properties. In this study, the mechanical characteristics of Cu-Ni FGM nanowires (NW) under uniaxial loading have been investigated using the proposed method through MD simulations. In order to describe the inter-atomic forces and hence predict the properties properly, EAM (Embedded atom model) potential has been used. The nanowire is composed of an alloying constituent in the core and the other constituent graded functionally along the outward radial direction. Simple Linear and Exponential functions have been considered as the functions which defines the grading pattern. The alloying percentage on the surface has been varied from 0% to 50% for both Cu-cored and Ni-cored nanowires. All the simulations have been carried out at 300 K. The L/D ratios are 10.56 and 10.67 for Cu-cored and Ni-cored NWs, respectively. This study suggests that Ultimate Tensile Stress and Young's modulus increase with increasing surface Ni percentage in Cu-cored NWs. However, in Ni-cored NWs these values decrease with the increase of surface Cu percentage. Also, for the same surface percentage of Ni in Cu-cored NW, the values are higher in linearly graded FGMs than that in exponentially graded FGMs. While in Ni-cored NWs, exponentially graded FGM shows higher values of UTS and E than those in linearly graded FGM. Thus, grading functions and surface percentages can be used as parameters for modulating the mechanical properties of FGM nanowires.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2020

Numerical Investigation of Mechanical Properties of Aluminum-Copper Alloys at Nanoscale

Nanoindentation is a powerful tool capable of providing fundamental insights of material elastic and plastic response at the nanoscale. Alloys at nanoscale are particularly interesting as the local heterogeneity and deformation mechanism revealed by atomistic study offers a better way to understand hardening mechanism to build a stronger material. In this work, nanoindentation in Al-Cu alloys are studied using atomistic simulations to investigate the effects of loading direction, alloying percentages of Cu via dislocation-driven mechanisms. Also, a low-fidelity finite element (FE) model has been developed for nanoindentation simulations where nanoscale materials properties are used from atomistic simulations. Material properties, such as hardness and reduced modulus, are computed from both the FE and MD simulations and then compared. Considering the fundamental difference between these two numerical approaches, the FE results obtained from the present study conform fairly with those from MD simulations. This paves a way into finding material properties of alloys with reduced simulation time and cost by using FE where high-fidelity results are not required. The results have been presented as load-displacement analysis, dislocation density, dislocation loops nucleation and propagation, von-Mises stress distribution and surface imprints. The techniques adopted in this paper to incorporate atomistic data into FE simulations can be further extended for finding other mechanical and fracture properties for complex alloy materials.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2019

Mechanical and Vibrational Characteristics of Functionally Graded Cu-Ni Nanowire: A Molecular Dynamics Study

Functionally graded material (FGM) is a class of advanced materials, consisting of two (or more) different constituents, that possesses a continuously varying composition profile. With the advancement of nanotechnology, applications of FGMs have shifted from their conventional usage towards sophisticated micro and nanoscale electronics and energy conversion devices. Therefore, the study of mechanical and vibrational properties of different FGM nanostructures is crucial in exploring their feasibility for different applications. In this study, for the first time, we employed molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to investigate the mechanical and vibrational properties of radially graded Cu-Ni FGM nanowires (NW). Distribution of Cu and Ni along the radial direction follows power-law, exponential and sigmoid functions for FGM NWs under consideration. Our results demonstrate that, distribution function parameters play an important role in modulating the mechanical (elastic modulus and ultimate tensile strength) and vibrational (natural frequency and quality factor) properties of FGM NWs. The study also suggests that, elastic moduli of FGM NWs can be predicted with relatively good accuracy using Tamura and Reuss micromechanical models, regardless of NW diameter. We found that, Euler-Bernoulli beam theory under-predicts the natural frequencies of FGM NWs, whereas He-Lilley model closely approximates the MD results. Interestingly, FGM NWs are always found to exhibit beat vibration because of their asymmetrical cross sections. Finally, this is the first atomistic scale study of FGMs that directly compares MD simulations with continuum theories and micromechanical models to understand the underlying mechanisms that govern the mechanical and vibrational properties of FGM NWs in nanoscale.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗