Mapping residual-stress distributions in a laser-peened Vit-105 bulk-metallic glass using the focused-ion-beam micro-slitting method

Measuring residual-stresses at the micron scale in glassy materials imposes experimental challenges, particularly when using diffraction, or other conventional laboratory methods, e.g., optical non-contact methods, grid methods, etc. In this short paper, a technique for mapping residual-stress profiles in amorphous materials with high spatial definition is used to measure residual-stresses in a laser-peened and fatigued bulk-metallic glass - Vit-105. The method involves local deposition of nano Pt dots patterns on the mapped region of the specimen and milling of a series of micro-slots of size 15 × 2 × 0.4 µm3 using the focused ion beam of a dual beam Field Emission Gun Scanning Electron Microscope / Focused Ion Gun (FEGSEM/FIB) instrument. The deformation fields in the vicinity of slots are reconstructed by the digital image correlation analyses (DICA) of FEGSEM images recorded during milling. The residual-stresses are inferred by fitting a reference displacement field obtained from finite-element analyses (FEA) with the recorded displacement field. In this way, residual-stress distributions have been characterized as a function of the distance from the laser-peened surface to a depth of 1,200 microns with a spatial resolution of 30 µm. The influence of fatigue loading on the compressive residual-stresses spatial distribution is studied and discussed. It was found that the fatigue loading significantly changes the compressive residual-stress spatial distribution in the laser-peened layer.