Orientation dependence of structural transition in fcc Al driven under uniaxial compression by atomistic simulations

By molecular dynamics simulations employing an embedded atom method potential, we have investigated structural transformations in single crystal Al caused by uniaxial strain loading along the 001, 011 and 111 directions. We find that the structural transition is strongly dependent on the crystal orientations. The entire structure phase transition only occurs when loading along the 001 direction, and the increased amplitude of temperature for 001 loading is evidently lower than that for other orientations. The morphology evolutions of the structural transition for 011 and 111 loadings are analysed in detail. The results indicate that only 20% of atoms transit to the hcp phase for 011 and 111 loadings, and the appearance of the hcp phase is due to the partial dislocation moving forward on 111_fcc family. For 011 loading, the hcp phase grows to form laminar morphology in four planes, which belong to the 111_fcc family; while for 111 loading, the hcp phase grows into a laminar structure in three planes, which belong to the 111_fcc family except for the (111) plane. In addition, the phase transition is evaluated by using the radial distribution functions.