Stress-strain curves of aluminum nanowires: Fluctuations in the plastic regime and absence of hardening

The engineering stress-strain curves of aluminum nanowires have been investigated by means of molecular dynamics. Nanowires were stretched at constant strain rate and at a temperature of 4.2 K. Atoms at fixed positions with velocities randomly distributed according to Maxwell distribution were taken as initial conditions. Averaging over at least 1500 realizations allows the conclusion that, beyond the yield point, the system does not harden, in line with experimental results for larger nanowires of gold measured at room temperature. Fluctuations of the heat exchanged in the nonlinear regime have been investigated by analyzing around 1.5 million data. The results indicate the presence of non-Gaussian tails in the heat probability distribution.