Phonon spectrum and related thermodynamic properties of microcrack in bcc-Fe

The phonon spectrum and the related thermodynamic properties of microcracks in bcc-Fe are studied with the recursion method by using the Finnis--Sinclair (F--S) N-body potential. The initial configuration of the microcracks is established from an anisotropic linear elastic solution and relaxed to an equilibrium by molecular dynamics method. It is shown that the local vibrational density of states of the atoms near a crack tip is considerably different from the bulk phonon spectrum, which is closely associated with the local stress field around the crack tip; meanwhile, the local vibrational energies of atoms near the crack tip are higher than those of atoms in a perfect crystal. These results imply that the crack tip zone is in a complex stress state and closely related to the structure evolution of cracks. It is also found that the phonon excitation is a kind of local effect induced by microcracks. In addition, the microcrack system has a higher vibrational entropy, which reflects the character of phonon spectrum related to the stress field induced by cracks.