Nanoscale simulations of Bauschinger effects on a nickel nanowire

In this paper, the Bauschinger effect on a nickel nanowire is studied implementing molecular dynamics simulations in nanoscale. The inter-atomic interactions are represented by employing embedded-atom potential. Initially, the stress-strain curves for tensile and compressive loading are simulated by applying suitable periodic boundary conditions on an infinitely long nanowire. The generated results demonstrate that the yield strength in compression is lower than the tensile yield strength. At the second stage, the tension-followed-by-compression process is applied to the specimen at a predetermined strain rate. It is observed that the resulted yield strength in the reloading or reverse loading is substantially lower than the compressive yield stress in the original direction, a phenomena known as the Bauschinger effect. The reverse loading process is then performed at different strain levels after yield to study the Bauschinger effect variations. To clarify the Bauschinger effects on Ni nanowire, the introduced Bauschinger stress parameter (BP) is employed in the analysis.