GRAIN-BOUNDARY SHEARING AS A TEST FOR INTERFACE MELTING

We examine the behaviour of the (310) symmetric tilt boundary with app lied shear stress in a face-centred cubic Lennard-Jones crystal. Our p urpose is to observe the mechanical properties of grain boundaries res ulting from interface melting. The grain boundary is seen to exhibit s ignificant self-diffusion at temperatures above 80% of the bulk meltin g point (T-m). Excess thermodynamic properties and the density of the system change dramatically in this region. However, the system is able to resist shear up to the higher temperature of 0.96T(m). Plots of pa rticle trajectories in the interface and estimates of the number of me lted layers provide insight into an understanding of this behaviour.