On the origin of elastic strain limit of bulk metallic glasses

All bulk metallic glasses exhibit a large and almost universal elastic strain limit. Here, we show that the magnitude of the yield strain of the glass state can be quantitatively derived from a characteristic property of the flow state typical in running shear bands (the root cause of yielding). The strain in the shear flow is mostly plastic, but associated with it there is an effective elastic atomic strain. The latter is almost identical for very different model systems in our molecular dynamics simulations, such that the corresponding yield strain is universal at any given homologous temperature.