Iron undergoes a bcc to close-packed structural phase transition under pressure, at around 13 GPa, as shown by diamond anvil and shock experiments. Atomistic simulations have been able to provide insights into the transition, but without any plasticity occurring before the phase change, in single crystals, defective single crystals, or polycrystals. However, experiments in polycrystals do show clear evidence for plasticity. Here we study homogeneous uniaxial compression of polycrystalline Fe using several interatomic potentials: three embedded-atom-model potentials and one modified embedded-atom-model potential. We analyze grain-boundary rotation and dislocation activity, and find that the amount of dislocation activity as a function of strain depends greatly on the potential used. This variation can be explained in terms of the dislocation properties, calculated in this work for each of these potentials.

At a pressure of around 13 GPa iron undergoes a structural phase transition from the bcc to the hexagonal close-packed phase. Atomistic simulations have provided important insights into this transition. However, while experiments in polycrystals show clear evidence that the $$\alpha${}$-$$\epsilon${}$ transition is preceded by plasticity, simulations up to now could not detect any plastic activity occurring before the phase change. Here we study shock waves in polycrystalline Fe using an interatomic potential which incorporates the $$\alpha${}$-$$\epsilon${}$ transition faithfully. Our simulations show that the phase transformation is preceded by dislocation generation at grain boundaries, giving a three-wave profile. The $$\alpha${}$-$$\epsilon${}$ transformation pressure is much higher than the equilibrium transformation pressure but decreases slightly with increasing loading ramp time (decreasing strain rate). The transformed phase is mostly composed of hcp grains with large defect density. Simulated x-ray diffraction displays clear evidence for this hcp phase, with powder-diffraction-type patterns as they would be seen using current experimental setups.

Large-scale nonequilibrium molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of shock waves in nanocrystalline iron show evidence of plasticity before the polymorphic transformation takes place. The atomistic structure in the shock direction shows an elastic precursor, plastic deformation, and shock-induced phase transformation from bcc to hcp iron. In this Rapid Communication, large-scale MD models show that the shock response of iron is highly related to the ramp time of the applied shocks. For long ramp times we observe significant plastic relaxation and formation of microstructure defects. Pressure-induced phase transformations in iron are accompanied by stress relaxation achieving almost fully relaxed three-dimensional hydrostatic final states. The evolution of the stress relaxation is in agreement with theory and experiments. Analysis of the x-ray diffraction patterns calculated from the atomistic structure using the Debye equation revealed pronounced anisotropy of the line broadening that is caused by stacking faults in hcp Fe and by dislocations in bcc Fe.