Associating damage nucleation and distribution with grain boundary characteristics in Ta

The effect of grain boundary (GB) characteristics (as represented by misorientation angle) on its dynamic response is investigated by sampling a large set of 185 GBs in Ta bi-crystals. These GBs encompass both ordered and disordered structures – typically referred to as metastable structures, in order to reflect the diversity in the local atomic structure observed in realistic GBs. The results reveal four distinct regimes in damage distribution and failure modes as a function of misorientation angle. The above trends also correlate with the variation in the corresponding void nucleation stress.